Net Zero Energy Library Competition

Location: Hollister, CA

Architects: Jensen Architects

Awards: AIA Architecture at Zero Competition Honor Award

Project Description: The program for 2020 Architecture at Zero Competition considers a ZNE community library for San Benito County, a largely rural area reaching across miles of Central California agricultural lands. With the expansion of retail and other enterprises in the area, this multicultural community has grown four-fold since its existing library was built in 1960. This competition-winning proposal poses a larger question: With the prospect of more social, cultural and environmental changes on the horizon, how can a library provide the most far reaching benefits for the community it serves?

This proposal for the site embraces the library’s expanding role as a community hub. A weave of pavilions and gardens, built with cross-laminated timber and wrapped in a translucent skin, comfortably holds the library’s multitude of services and provides for a spectrum of settings, from climate-controlled media labs and historical archives to outdoor meeting spaces. The effect is inviting and uplifting: an open, inclusive facility where the county’s diverse community finds sustaining resources to support an array of needs and long-term aspirations. A place fully dedicated to community service, the library also can transform, should the need arise, into a self-sufficient, disaster recovery center.