Peter Gisolfi Associates, the architecture and landscape architecture firm with offices in Hastings-on-Hudson and New Haven, recently received three awards for design excellence.
The American Institute of Architects Westchester/Hudson Valley Chapter and the New York Library Association”™s Public Libraries Section (PLS) each cited the firm”™s redesign of the Longwood Public Library in Middle Island in Suffolk County for its “dramatic transformation and bright spaces” in what had been a commonplace building. The AIA also designated a High Honor Award for the new Trevor Day School in Manhattan, which was cited for a “creative solution on a tight city site.”
At 31,000 square feet, the Longwood Public Library was the smallest building among Suffolk County”™s libraries serving similar populations. The site faces a busy state highway. Gisolfi”™s new design refocused the building toward a wooded area to the south, and enlarged the library to 48,000 square feet with a new wing to the west.
In order to create an energy-efficient library, the entire building envelope was insulated, all windows were triple glazed, and a new energy-saving heating and cooling system was installed. The building will receive LEED gold certification.
“The library director and I explored the woodland to the south, and I understood immediately that the building should take advantage of that setting,” said Peter Gisolfi, the firm”™s senior partner and lead architect for the project.
The AIA recognized the building”™s “generously-sized windows that provide transparency with its many daylit spaces, the appeal of the glass wall facing the natural woodland, the comfortable environment for library users, and the sustainability enhancements.” The New York Library Association noted the “impact on the library”™s ability to provide services to its community with cost effective and innovative solutions to space challenges.”
Trevor Day School, a coed independent school in Manhattan, commissioned Gisolfi to design a new high school/middle school building on a 100-by-100-foot site. The architects conceived a 15-story 110,000-square-foot vertical campus building with 10,000 square feet of rooftop open space on three levels. The building is 210 feet high, with an 85-foot-high masonry base for most of the public and larger group spaces, including the auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria, library, and music rehearsal spaces. The school is heated and cooled with a closed loop “energy pile” geothermal system, one of the first systems of its kind in the U.S.
In addition to praising the school”™s architecture, the AIA jury which bestowed the High Honor Award declared, “It looks like a fun place to learn.”
