The Milton S. Eisenhower (MSE) Library will undergo structural and aesthetic renovations following the collection of student, faculty and administrative input.
According to the Sheridan Libraries’ Director of Communications & Marketing Brian J. Shields, the original plan was to only update the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, but Shields said that simply renovating those aspects of the library would not be an effective use of time and money.
MSE still has the same architecture and appearance as it did when it was built in the 1960s.
“The HVAC is now 50 years old — it’s the original HVAC system... Replacing that and leaving everything else intact didn’t make sense at all. This building was built for its time,” Shields said. “When we looked to renovate, it would be really short-sighted to just renovate and overlook everything else.”
Winston Tabb, the Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and Museums, agreed with Shields on the decision to renovate the entire library.
“The heating and cooling system has been showing its 50-year-old age for some time; and that problem was exacerbated when we opened the connection to Brody 3 years ago,” Tabb wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
”When the need for a new HVAC system was presented to the trustees’ Capital Subcommittee, they wisely concluded that it would be a shame to spend a lot on a system and end up with a library that was still very much an artifact of the 1960’s. So they have asked us to initiate a planning process that will meet future library needs.”
Shields said that student input will drive the decisions for renovating the library. To do so, design teams will be looking to discover user behaviors and preferences for ideal study spaces. The first step in this process was the creation of a comprehensive survey that has already been filled out by 1,100 undergraduates.
The survey includes specific questions about students’ opinions on the current state of the library, as well as questions about their preferred study habits and whether they prefer the study spaces in Brody Learning Commons (BLC) to those in MSE.
According to Shields, the feedback from the survey will be helpful to the future of the project. He identified a potential challenge in the fact that the project doesn’t have a projected start date.
“We’re engaging with different organizations to bring people in and tell them where we’re going. A challenge is to engage people in something that doesn’t have a start date. But people have been really responsive and candid,” Shields said.
Undergraduates’ potential concerns about the renovations could include how the new library will fit into the existing architecture of the Homewood campus. Freshman Mia Berman expressed her opinions on the library’s current and future appearance.
“I don’t think MSE is really representative of the look of the Hopkins campus,” Berman said. “Especially looking at it from the Charles Street side, I think it could be made to look more cohesive.”
Shields said that although the University hasn’t decided on a new design aesthetic for MSE Library, bringing in more natural light to study spaces is a main design prerogative. Shields said that this is a challenge because much of the building is underground.
Shields said that contrary to the myth that is sometimes told on campus tours, MSE’s descending levels were not built because the building could not be taller than Gilman Hall. Rather, Shields said, the building was built to its current height so it would not dwarf the Homewood House.
Tabb also said that the design project will reflect the more modern, collaborative studying mindset of the student body. Following the first student survey, design teams will be thinking of more ways to collect student preferences and ideas. The collaborative measures the University used to design the BLC will be revisited in the design of MSE.
“Simply put, what we hope to do through the MSE renovation is to create the kinds of studying, learning and collaborative spaces appropriate for the 21st century, not the 20th!” Tabb wrote.
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