A significant addition to Dover’s revitalized downtown historical district and first major public building demonstrating sustainable design, the library aims to be a regional destination, providing more hands-on educational resources for the city and encouraging community engagement in both civic and sustainable design.
Playful electric lighting is integrated with generous daylighting. Occupancy and daylight-responsive controls contribute to significant energy savings and balance the visual needs of individual and group activities in this popular, public building. Thrifty and easy-to-maintain luminaires consume only 0.76 watts per square foot and creatively emphasize the lighthearted atmosphere of the library. Intuitive, multi-function lighting controls enable librarians and visitors to tune the lighting to their various needs.
The city’s priorities for the new library include energy and water conservation, green building education, and healthy interior environments. To reach these goals, Atelier Ten focused the team on integrated daylighting and lighting, an optimized high-performance envelope, and innovative water reduction strategies to design a library where energy cost is 36% less and total potable water use is 62% less than a code-compliant building.
