Last year, after summer break ended, the Parker community returned to school to find a newly renovated library.  However in the recent past months, the school met with a design firm, Wonder, By Design, led by architect Trung Le, to officially finalize the school’s library renovation plans.

Principal Dan Frank, Vice Principal Ruth Jurgensen, Director of Education Technology Martin Moran, the facilities committee, and librarians Annette Lesak and Mary Catherine Coleman worked with Le to finalize the plan.  Le brought two different design options for the librarians and administrators to look over and discuss a more specific plan for what they believe the space should look like.  The final design plan incorporated the best ideas from both options and converged them to a revised concept.  

“At this point nothing has been approved by the facilities committee,” Lesak said, “so nothing is locked down, but fingers are crossed that we’ll be able to share the design plans with the rest of the Parker community by the end of September.”

According to Le, the administration will reveal renderings, which will demonstrate the design.

“My interaction with educators around the world basically fundamentally changed the way that I think we should practice architecture,” Le said.  “One of the critical things for us is how do we engage and understand the people and community in which we are designing.  So we focus on how do we create workshops that allows everyone to participate in co-creating the library rather than us owning it and designing it on our own.”

During the 2014-15 school year, Le worked alongside the Parker Library design team in leading a few student, parent, and faculty workshops where participants shared their ideas.  From this, the team gathered insight and integrated these ideas from the community into the new design of the library.

“The new space just amplifies that it is a place for collaboration, socializing, a place for large groups to come together, and a place for us to do projects,” Le said.  “Actually I think it’s going to be a very active space.  But we heard from many of you that that you want a space to go in and do your work, so that will clearly be visible as well.  Some of it will be a little bit of a surprise, but some of it you say, oh, obviously we need that.”

The new library will be expandable.  There’s even a possibility that the final library plan will have an outdoor component where students can go outside and read or meet in small groups.  The design team is contemplating some sort of an outdoor plaza to the east that allows users to look across the turf field, according to Le.

At the same time over the summer when administrators and Le were mapping out the final library space, many students and visitors of Parker spent time using the library where minor renovations took place. The library was open to the Parker community and visitors from 8:30-10:30 Tuesday to Thursday in June and July.  Students participating in Parker summer camps and others staying in the city visited to borrow books and do work.  Over the course of the two months, 223 books were checked out.

“It’s not very much, but it was the first time the library was open over the summer to Parker community members,” Lesak said, “so we’re happy with that.”

The availability of the library throughout the summer positively impacted sixth grade visitor Talia Holceker.

“I came twice and I checked out two fiction books which I really liked,” Holceker said.  “It was sort of quiet when I came, but I actually saw one of my classmates reading on one of the couches, which was nice ‘cause we ended up talking for a little.”

In preparation for the 2015-16 school year, Lesak and Coleman further weeded through upper school fiction and lower school books, and rearranged and removed more bookshelves and countertops across the library.  They boxed up weeded books for donation, ordered new books, and then processed, shelved, and applied new spine labels to the new books.  Dry erase paint was coated on more walls and tables, and a new analog light-brite wall — a pegboard with holes that students can stick colored tees into — has been added, according to Lesak.  

The library office was also reorganized to make it into a group workspace for both faculty and students.  Lesak and Coleman removed a lot of old items that took up space, specifically unused bookcases and three desks.  They also painted one wall with dry erase paint and are working on getting some larger conference-style tables to put in the office.

Changes made to the library over the summer are minor in comparison to those that will take place next summer.  Parker will obtain the appropriate city permits for construction and make other preparations necessary for these renovations.  The library may need to be closed during the spring to start construction, which will mark the beginning of the final library renovation.