The most surprising part of visiting the Charles Hayden Memorial Library at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is going inside. From the exterior, the stalwart modern structure, clad in limestone, looks much as it has since it opened in 1951. Now, when you enter, you find that the place has been radically altered so that space and light permeate the interior—vertically through stairs pushing up into an atrium-like opening, and horizontally with a glazed inner courtyard on one side and expanses of bay windows on the other. The renovation, by Boston-based Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA), has thoroughly transformed “a book barn without charm,” as Sheila Kennedy, KVA principal and MIT architecture professor, describes the original incarnation.

Hayden Library occupies one side of the square-donut-shaped Building 14—which also houses a music library, exhibition gallery, small music hall, and classrooms that were not in the purview of this renovation—and is in the prime location for this block: it faces south, to the tree-lined Memorial Drive and the Charles River beyond. The building was designed by Voorhees, Walker, Foley & Smith, whose principal, Ralph Walker, an MIT architecture graduate (1911), achieved acclaim for his New York Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. But his later Hayden Library was more perfunctory.