The architectural team of Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle has been hard at work on the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) master plan for more than a year. The process has been guided by NYPL’s desire to avoid a repetition of the bruising controversy set off by Foster + Partners’ 2013 proposal to replace the stacks and its books with what some derided as an internet café. So, this marvel of efficiency, with a capacity of three million books, was excluded from the architects’ program. An omission that mocks the term “master plan.”
Just before NYPL’s trustees unanimously approved the new master plan to renovate the 42nd Street library last November, one trustee asked if it was wise to approve a proposal that excluded the building’s historic book stacks (about 1/5 of the its cubic space). Assurances were made, but the question went unanswered. A few weeks later, Iris Weinshall, NYPL’s Chief Operating Officer, was asked to release floor plans of the proposal; she claimed not to have such “technical documents.” Stonewalling comes naturally to leadership within the two foot thick marble walls of this 1912 Carrère & Hastings masterpiece. But what responsible stewards would agree to spend $144 million on a project with no floor plans?
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