NOLEN STUDY ROOM
Thomas J. Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size: 960 sqft
Location: New York, NY
Year: 2023-
Type: Commission, Interior Renovation
Team: Morgane Copp
Status: In progress

The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the great resources in the world for research into the history of art manifested as printed matter. It is also public, open to anyone who wishes to access the collection and spend time in the shared space of the library. As such the reading rooms form a crucial hinge joining the public experience of research exploration with the curated maintenance of the library’s collection. The last manifestation of these spaces was built in 1964 at the height of New York City’s enthrallment with mid-century modernism in architecture and design. This legacy is acknowledged by the redesign of the Watson Library Study rooms, but also transformed materially and aesthetically into a unique shared space for the public, both for individual research as well as workshops, seminars, and small events. The existing wood shelves of the library are reused to clad the walls as a paneling. The surfaces of the shelves are CNC milled with a pattern allusive to the symmetries and techniques of book marbling and book matching. The new shelves are aluminum recesses into these thickened wall cavities. The modernist dropped ceiling is reimagined as a luminous surface transforming the space into a glowing box for the shared study of the library’s collection.

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