Named after one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders, Washington D.C.-based Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library has been offering a wide range of opportunities and services since 1972. This landmark structure was originally designed by pioneering modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. But 40 years of delayed facility maintenance prompted modernization and renovation.
After a three-year transformation by Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo Architecten, working in collaboration with Washington, D.C.-based OTJ Architects, the library was reborn as a new, human-oriented environment at all levels and adds facilities including a public roof garden, a theater, signature staircases and a suite of community studios and workshops. One thing unchanged is its façade, thanks to its historic landmark status. Designed to meet LEED Silver standards through the addition of critical sustainable design features, this renovation was made complete with an environmental emphasis.
Two Extensive Green Roofs
The library’s fourth floor now features a major 291-capacity auditorium with banked seating which rises into an entirely new, publicly accessible 17,250-square-foot fifth-floor terrace. The auditorium lobby opens into this new sky garden. This and another extensive green roof, which sits on a raised deck atop the main roof of the library total over 26,000 square feet. The new floor is contained within a trapezoid, glazed pavilion, sheltered by a roof cantilevering out around it. The pavilion is not visible from the street, a location where the building’s profile and geometry look exactly as Mies designed it…