Office of Luke Bulman

Cooperman Library
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Hunter College, client/user
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Marble Fairbanks Architects

The existing library at Hunter College needed to be updated from a collection-based model to one that emphasized services, gathering spaces, and various degrees of informal meeting spaces. The project is on three levels of a nine-level building.

The environmental graphic program made navigation to services easier by color-coding zones for each discipline (orange-writing, red-mathematics, yellow-science) plus one for general navigation (blue) that plugged into the larger university-wide graphic system.

Each hub has a central check-in desk and in a unique hue that is surrounded by visual cues in the floor and ceiling that help to define its zone while maintaining a relatively quiet graphic environment free of lettering or directional signage. Spaces like these should be designed as much for frequent users as for first time visitors.