Library design focused on people and community

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to see poet and entrepreneur Wesley “Wallstreet Wes” Robinson perform in a spoken word event at my library. I was inspired by his performance and started following him on social media (@wallstreet_wes_gmtd), where I learned that Wallstreet facilitates poetry clinics to deliver what he calls “emotional first aid,” many times to those who are justice-involved. His posts frequently include the tagline “I’m in the building because I’m into building.”

I found myself repeating that phrase when I recently attended Library Journal’s Design Institute event at the beautiful Clark Family Branch of St. Louis County Library (SLCL). The library branch—the 21st project in SLCL’s Your Library Renewed building program—reflects the learning they’ve acquired after a decade-long capital improvement campaign. It is the kind of building that draws the community in with abundant comfy seating, a contemporary makerspace, an expansive local art collection, one of the most playful children’s areas I’ve ever seen, and big, bright windows that offer sweeping views of the thoughtfully integrated native landscape surrounding the branch. People who are in the building are there developing skills, knowledge, and relationships.

In conversations with the seven architect partners at the Design Institute event—Arcturis, FGMA, Gresham Smith, Johnston Architects, Lamar Johnson Collaborative, OPN, and Quinn Evans—we consistently heard that the success of a library construction or renovation project really boils down to one thing: knowing your community and understanding their needs.

Library design should prioritize the user experience, according to our experts, leveraging what Toby Olsen of OPN called “radical inclusivity” to accommodate the diverse activities that take place in a library. This means balancing vibrant social spaces with areas for quiet, individual work; it means considering more than basic community demographics to expand how we think about space as it relates to service.

Even at the earliest stages of a project, our experts recommended developing a budget that begins not with dollars but with a strong sense for project priorities and guiding principles, all of which are informed by the local community. These principles should be grounded in the library’s values and serve as the framework for budget decision–making. At SLCL, the team chose early on to prioritize student success, which translated into 18 small group study spaces and highly durable, flexible furniture in the Clark Family branch. At midterm and finals time, the spaces are filled with local high school students who make the library their home base for test prep and project collaboration.

Discussions at the event also touched on the ways sustainable design principles have evolved to now encompass resiliency. In addition to practices such as energy efficiency and local sourcing, resilient design means integrating elements that help a library to serve as critical infrastructure capable of withstanding extreme weather events and maintaining essential services like power and internet. The library building, in these instances, becomes a crucial part of community re-building in the wake of a disaster.

In LJ’s 2025 Year in Architecture feature, we see how public and academic libraries have incorporated these ideas about people and community building into their renovation or new building projects. From libraries that serve as neighborhood anchors to inclusive spaces for students and researchers to playful design elements that bring families and kids together so relationships can be nurtured, libraries, very clearly, are into building people and community.

I recently checked in with Wallstreet and discovered that he has partnered with his library system on a mobile emotional literacy program—moving out of the building to help strengthen individual resiliency. I was reminded that the best libraries meet people where they are, offering a welcome space while inspiring them to consider what’s possible. When the built environment aligns with service delivery, libraries are best positioned to foster individual opportunity and community progress.