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Jacksonville Public Library
Jacksonville, Florida
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Jacksonville Public Library
Located in the heart of downtown Jacksonville, this new $95 million
building will provide the city with a “classically inspired”,
highly efficient state of the art facility accommodating the city’s
evolving cultural and civic needs. The building consists of 5 floors
and contains over 320,000 square feet of space; the design had to
work around the existing Jacksonville MOMA (Museum of Modern Art)
which is located in the northwest corner of the project site
Architectural requirements dictated that the new building triples
the size of the city’s previous library to accommodate over
2 million books in addition to providing a 400 seat auditorium,
a 5,000 square foot multi-purpose room, an elevated garden terrace
and other public facilities.
The classical architectural style on the exterior of the building
encloses a modern facility that has made great use of the traditional
flexibility and reliability of concrete as well as the material’s
advanced structural systems to accomplish demanding open space requirements
in a very heavily loaded building.
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Library’s overall program required the structure to accommodate
extremely heavy live loads of 150 pounds per square foot. These
loads had to be carried over the 32-foot clear spans. After exhaustive
studies performed on the superstructure by the structural firm of
DESIMOME Consulting Engineers of New York City and Miami; the design
team settled on a flat-slab system with drop panels, as it provided
the cleanest and most economical solution for the architectural
requirements
The flat-slab system transfers the loads to reinforced concrete
columns and shear walls, which are supported on the building’s
spread footing foundation. Support of the slab loads was accomplished
using a 10.5 inch slab with 5.5 inch drop panels. Spandrel beams
were located along the building perimeter to stiffen the slab edge
to support the pre-cast façade panel loads.
Also, in order to create the column-free space required for open
spaces at the theater and meeting rooms located at the first floor
level, the structural design had to consider not only the span distances
but had to account for transfer of several column loads per beam
from the upper floor levels to shear walls located below. The column
loads were transferred using post-tensioned girders which measured
approximately 5 feet by 8 feet deep and spanned lengths over 80
feet to provide column free space in the theater and meeting rooms.
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| Theater under construction. |
Transfer beams over theater. |
The Lateral Force Resisting System relies on interaction between
shear-walls and frame-action to resist wind forces. The frame action
is provided by the monolithic behavior between columns, drop panels,
flat slab panels and spandrel beams. The shear walls are distributed
throughout the building
and are typically 12 inch thick and utilize 5,000 psi concrete.
Prrecast concrete panels with 16 inch thickness were placed around
the building’s entire façade. To support this ornate
system; the spandrel beam was modified so that wedge inserts could
be located at the attachment points for the pre-cast pieces.
More construction photos of project:
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