Georgia Tech Price Gilbert Library & Crosland Tower Renewal

After years of planning and construction, the renewed Georgia Tech Library opened its doors to students and faculty in the Spring of 2020 with a completely renovated and retooled building designed by the collaborative team of PRAXIS3 and BNIM. The renewal and transformation of Crosland Tower and the Price Gilbert Memorial Library represents the culmination of a multi-phased, $75 million renovation across two existing library buildings. Originally constructed in 1968, Crosland Tower has been transformed from a nearly windowless facility designed solely for storing books into a brightly-lit state-of-the-art collaborative research environment. This programmatic transformation was made possible by the removal of existing brick walls on the north and south facades and replacing them with high performance glazed curtain walls featuring integrated external sunshades optimized to improve energy performance to reduce glare and to harvest natural daylight and direct it toward the center of the floor plate. At the Price Gilbert building, the design seamlessly and sensitively integrates technology-rich research and collaboration areas into the building’s iconic 1953 international style architecture. Additionally, the glazing systems were carefully rehabilitated with high-performance curtain walls that retain the original architectural expression. One aspect of this project that we’re most proud of is that while the Library’s seat count has doubled as a result of the renovations, the building’s energy consumption has been reduced by more than sixty percent.