RENOVATION AND EXPANSION OF
THE MORGAN LIBRARY
2000 – 2006, NEW YORK, U.S.A
Creating additional space for the Morgan Library in the heart of Manhattan was a particular challenge. This elegant group of buildings, a ‘village of memory’ is surrounded by the dense urban fabric of New York City, a seemingly solid physical barrier around the site. Rather than building upwards, Renzo Piano Building Workshop decided to dig downwards into the hard rock to build a sort of underground vault in which to house the library’s rare book collection. With surgical precision, new steel and glass units were inserted in and amongst the existing buildings.
