Friday Night Public Meeting

After five days of meeting with various people and library/museum user groups, we put our thoughts together and presented them on Friday at 5:00.


Community members getting ready for the presentation.




Brian Meissner (ECI-Hyer) summarizing the week. Through meeting with everyone, we felt we produced conceptual building plans and ideas that really reflected community desires, good library/museum design, and sustainable building practices.


After the meeting, it was great to see people looking at the drawings on this table... pointing, talking and asking questions.


Keith urging people to keep the ball rolling on fundraising and getting this project to come to fruition (after being serenaded with a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday).

Finally some landscape...

We finally got to the point with the building that some thought could be given to the site design. We played with something preliminary to begin to talk about landscape and streetscape elements of the project.

Luckily Jae's kids came equipped with wax crayons. So, we sat down to color our own things and help each other out.


Peter Briggs (Corvus Design) getting advice on exactly which shade of green is best used to show some roses in the landscape plan (with a few dots of red here and there).


The pretty fast landscape plan for the site of the site used to begin to talk about connection of the building to adjacent uses, getting the landscape and building to complement one another, opportunities for art, and lower maintenance native plantings.

The Process of Design

Some people have stopped past Soo's B&B to visit and comment, but for those of you that haven't been able to make it, here are a few photos. Design process is about drawing a lot of things to try and workshop ideas and figure things out.


Sometimes (usually?) design is fueled by coffee.


Thomas Hacker (THA Architecture) working with Brian and Jae on Museum/Library floorplan development.


Mary Tougas sharing a cup of tea and comments.


Lots of trace paper... sketch...revise... crumple and move to the next one.


Keith Campbell at the table with us.


Kerry Martin and Keith Campbell dropping by.

What a view might look like...

We got up on the building that's to the east of the library, and developed a 360 degree panoramic photo from the roof. The left and right edge of the photo is approximately north. (click on it to be taken to a larger version)



Here's what the view looks like from east of this location, down on the site.

HIgh School Meeting

We met with a group of high school students to show them what we do, and to get input on the project. These are some of the things they mentioned:

• Arcade (gaming)
• Conference room
• Coffee/juice bar
• Couches
• Spaces to hang out
• Art - rotating exhibitions (local perhaps)
• A space for community awards (display trophies)
• Books for fun and research
• An area for teenagers
• "Kindles" and online reading
• They go to the current library with parents, alone and friends
• Free wireless
• A place to relax
• Better bike rack(s)
• More computers
• Interlibrary loan access
• Computer access - "Myspace lounge"
• Board games (candyland, monopoly)
• Atmosphere (like resurrection art)
• Music
• What will the library be named??
• Views are important
• Murals (where the wild things are)
• "Coffee shop feel"
• Mix of furniture types
• Dr. Seuss theme
• Cabin/Chalet feel - "modern log"
• Fireplace
• Neoclassical
• Some round to it... like house on Millionaire's Row
• Smoothie bar
• Outside spaces
• Deck
• Happy medium between how much stuff is there... open and airy vs. more stuff and comfortable

Brian Meissner (ECI Hyer) showing some images of other Alaskan buildings


A good group providing great input.

Aerial of Seward and the Site

Existing Museum