Malletts Creek Branch
- The Land
- Building and Landscaping Plans
- Ground Breaking Ceremony
The Malletts Creek Branch is an example of sustainable design. Both the building itself and the surrounding landscape capitalize on environmental principles, thereby allowing the overall project to operate more in harmony with the ecosystem and the community in which it serves. The building incorporates solar heating, natural daylighting, convection cooling, and materials which are from renewable resources and ultimately recyclable. The Library site encompasses principles such as naturally capturing and filtering stormwater and implementing native plants and grasses.
Malletts Creek Branch - NEWS RELEASE
August 14, 2003
ANN ARBOR DISTRICT LIBRARY RECEIVES $236,006 FEDERAL GRANT FROM THE UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Grant Will Provide Funding For An Innovative Storm Water System
For New Branch Library
The Ann Arbor District Library has has been awarded a $236,006 grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). The grant was awarded for the project Ann Arbor District Library: Innovative Storm Water System, which is a natural-systems approach to storm water management that will be utilized at the Library’s new Malletts Creek Branch.
Malletts Creek Branch
Opened January 10, 2004
Architects: Luckenbach | Ziegelman Architects, PLLC
Construction Manager: Skanska USA Building, Inc.
Landscape Architects: InSite Design Studio, Inc.
Malletts Creek Branch
3090 E. Eisenhower Parkway (east of Stone School Road) - Google Maps
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734) 327-4200
Opened in January 2004, the Malletts Creek Branch replaced the Loving Branch and is a unique model of sustainable design featuring solar heating, natural day lighting, a vegetated green roof, convection cooling, naturally captured and filtered storm water, native plants and grasses, and many uses of materials that are renewable resources. The Malletts Creek Branch was awarded the 2005 American Institute of Architects Michigan (AIA Michigan) Award for Sustainable Design.
The Malletts Creek Branch is a one-story building of approximately 14,000 square feet that serves as a community-based learning center that delivers superior customer service, primarily to the residents of the southeast quadrant of Ann Arbor. The building and the surrounding landscape capitalize on environmental principles, thereby allowing the overall project to operate more in harmony with the ecosystem and the community in which it serves.
Read more about the Mallets Creek Branch or visit our image gallery to see photos and drawings of the building.
Resources
The Branch houses an updated collection, consisting of traditional materials, such as books, magazines, and DVDs. Electronic resources include 28 computer terminals, 18 of which are located in an Electronic Training classroom, and wireless internet access throughout the building. Along with the more traditional picture and chapter books, the Mallets Creek Youth and Young Adult section features a sizable collection of Teen graphic novels, youth magazines and a group of Youth computer stations.
Spaces
While its primary mission is to deliver traditional library services, the Branch also serves as a true community center. This facility includes a quiet and comfortable reading area complete with fireplace that houses the branch's magazines and newspapers. Mallets Creek also features a vending area with seating for 20 people, a program room for groups of up to 80 people, three study and tutor rooms and a children's play area. For more information about how to rent the program room please visit the Room Rental Page.
Lockers
Now your items can be ready for pickup whenever you are. Held items available for pickup at the Malletts Creek Branch can be placed in lockers for after hours pickup. Simply follow the link in your hold notice email or at the bottom of your Requests and Holds list on the My Account page. Items will be placed in lockers outside of the building and will remain available for pickup there until the open of the library the next day.
Please click here to send your comments.
Traverwood Branch
Opened June 30, 2008
Architects: Van Tine">Guthrie Studio
Construction Manager: O’Neal Construction, Inc.
Landscape Architects: Grissim Metz Andriese Associates
Watch "Up From Ashes", a documentary film about the making of the Traverwood Branch Library.
Go to the page for this video to get downloadable and high-quality versions.
About the Traverwood Branch Library
The Traverwood Branch Library is situated on 4.34 acres located in the southwest corner of Traverwood Drive and Huron Parkway in Ann Arbor. The Branch is a one-story building of approximately 16,500 square feet which replaced the Northeast Branch of AADL, located in Plymouth Mall. It opened June 30, 2008.
The Traverwood Branch serves as a community-based learning center that delivers superior customer service, primarily to the residents of the northeast quadrant of Ann Arbor. While its mission is to deliver traditional library services, the facility also includes a casual study area with seating for 14 and vending, a laptop computer bar with seating for nine, and a meeting room with seating for 90.
The Branch houses an updated collection, consisting of traditional materials, such as books, magazines, and DVDs. The facility contains a reading room for comfortable, leisurely reading, four study and tutor rooms, and self-service stations for convenient checkout. Electronic resources include 24 public computer terminals, 20 of are located in an Electronic Training classroom, and wireless internet access.
The Traverwood Branch is designed to have as little impact on natural landscape features as possible. Sustainable design features include an innovative stormwater management system and the reuse of harvested ash trees from the building site. A rain garden is located on the south side of the building. The design of the Branch takes advantage of natural day lighting.
Both the building and the surrounding landscape capitalize on environmental principles, thereby allowing the overall project to operate more in harmony with the ecosystem and the community in which it serves.
The L-shaped design of the building is echoed throughout its design and construction with the repeated use of angles, which presented both architectural opportunities and challenges. Far from rigid rectilinear symmetry, the building suggests geometric playfulness and curiosity about the interaction between line and three-dimensional form. The simple act of pouring concrete was complicated by the unusual design, and the woodwork, composed of Ash milled from trees on the site, defies the imagination, spreading up from the floor across a portion of the building’s walls and even curving along a wavy expanse in precisely cut concentric pieces.
Several years ago an invasive species of beetle began making its home on the Ash trees of Southeastern Michigan. While the adult Emerald Ash Borer munched innocuously on the trees’ deciduous leaves, its larvae attacked the inner bark, making fascinating but harmful trails along the trunk, destroying the trees’ ability to distribute nutrients. The Emerald Ash Borer proved unstoppable, killing more than 30 million ash trees in southeastern Michigan alone. The results are clearly visible on the Northeast side of town; sunlight streams down into forests where trees once stood and bugs and other animals have begun making their homes in the fallen logs strewn throughout wooded areas.
During the initial investigation of the Traverwood site, the area was found to contain many Ash trees. AADL applied for and received a $30,000 grant from the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation & Development Council to remove and incorporate the trees in the new building’s construction, harkening back to a time when building materials of necessity came from the surrounding area. Echoing this shift in time, draft horses were brought in to remove the trees from the site, eliminating the need to damage or fall nearby trees in the removal process. This unusual method was featured on Michigan Radio’s Environment Report in March of 2007. Following their removal from the site, AADL contracted Johnson Hardwoods to mill the trees for use in flooring and shelving for the Traverwood Branch. A few of the trees were left intact and used as support beams along a row of windows on the south wing of the building to dramatic effect. The trunks interact beautifully with the uninterrupted expanse of green trees behind the building, and visitors can inspect the Emerald Ash Borer’s damage curving over the surface of the beams.
“It is in the nature of any organic building to grow from within on its site: come out of the ground an organism into the light—the ground itself held always as a component part of the building itself…. A building dignified as a tree in the midst of Nature.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, Autobiography
The building’s site, a triangular portion of land at the intersection of Traverwood Drive and Huron Parkway, runs along the Stapp Nature Preserve at its rear. The unusual shape of the lot and the extensive wooded area dictated the shape of the building, which, in deference to the natural setting, hugs the corner in an L-shape. This led to an ingenious solution to an ongoing problem in public library design: creating a space that serves the entire community well. While some people come to the library for quiet study and research, others view it as a community gathering space or a place for children to explore. Public libraries are charged with being all of these things, and meeting the needs of many different people simultaneously presents a tremendous challenge. Traverwood, with its L-shape, meets this dilemma head-on. The library’s meeting room and children’s area occupy the western wing of the building, while the adult collection and quiet reading room spread along the south wing. The reading room in particular is acoustically remote from the children’s area. The building’s high ceilings and central entrance point maintain a sense of cohesion and connection between the two spaces.
Like all of AADL’s new buildings, Traverwood incorporates innovative features that minimize its impact on the environment. Beyond taking the striking natural landscape into consideration when planning the building, Traverwood has been designed to make sure the surrounding natural area is not harmfully impacted by its presence. Traverwood features an innovative stormwater management system that captures water flowing off the roof through the use of two scuppers or downspouts. On rainy days visitors will be able to watch the water cascading past as it makes its way into an underground system of pipes. The water is then held underground and gradually released into a retention pond at the south end of the site.
Traverwood’s playful 21st Century design stands in stark contrast to the Carnegie libraries built at the turn of the last century. At the corner of State and Huron in downtown Ann Arbor, the façade of the city’s own Carnegie library stands alone, moored by steel girders at the edge of a modern construction site. Its strong columns and arches reflect an architectural style of long ago, proclaiming the temple of knowledge they used to contain. Today’s modern public libraries no longer strive to emulate classical architecture. Yet, as Traverwood and AADL’s other recently completed branches, Malletts Creek (2004) and Pittsfield (2006), demonstrate, they still seek to carve an impressive silhouette. Rather than looking to the past, however, AADL’s new branches embrace the future. Welcoming and accessible, both literally and figuratively, they look forward to the future of libraries in their community, and in this way have taken on the important mission of educating the public about sustainable design and construction. Each of AADL’s new branches has been designed with sustainability in mind, incorporating green building technology throughout its construction.
The Library Branch Expansion Project
The vision of branch libraries for the Ann Arbor Library system began with former Library Director Homer Chance. Recognizing the need for access to materials and facilities beyond the Downtown Library, Chance opened the first branch library in Ann Arbor - the Loving Branch - in 1965. In 1977 the West Branch opened its doors and the Northeast Branch began serving the community in 1981.
In 1997, with a goal of providing superior public library services into the future, the Library embarked on a Facilities Need Analysis of the library system by consultant David Smith. His study found the three branch libraries severely lacking in square footage to meet current and future public needs.
Using data gathered in surveys, on-site interviews, and estimates of projected material collection sizes in the year 2020, Smith’s study called for the construction of several larger branch libraries to serve the long-term community needs. These would accommodate projected collection sizes and provide adequate meeting, event, storytime and teen spaces, as well as areas for growing technology and staff work areas.
Since 1997, the Library has been working toward the goal of creating these larger, more functional branches constructed within the Library’s current authorized millage.
- In January 2004, the 14,000 square foot Malletts Creek Branch opened its doors on Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor. This replacement for the 39-year-old Loving Branch features expanded program areas seating 80 people, a collection of over 47,000 items, a vending area with seats for 20 people and state-of-the-art technology, including 28 computer terminals and a computer training center. Since the opening of the Malletts Creek Branch, circulation and program attendance figures have skyrocketed and are a dramatic increase over those of the former Loving Branch.
- In March 2006, the 14,600 square foot Pittsfield Branch of the Ann Arbor District Library was opened on Oak Valley Drive. This facility houses a program/meeting room which seats up to 100 individuals, a reading room, study areas and state-of-the-art technology. As a new new addition to the Ann Arbor District Library branch system, the Pittsfield Branch serves an ever-expanding population in a growing area of the Ann Arbor district.
- This new branch on Traverwood Drive and Huron Parkway is the third step in the Library Branch Expansion Project.
Northeast Branch
The Northeast Branch was situated in the same location in the Plymouth Road Mall for approximately twenty-four years. During that time, in an effort to keep pace with the demand for services, the original space expanded twice and underwent a complete renovation in 2001. New carpeting, improved lighting, a renovated program and storytime room were added in an effort to make cosmetic changes until a site for a new branch could be located. Despite these expansions and renovations, the Northeast Branch lacked the space and service considerations outlined by David Smith’s 1997 study.
Traverwood Branch Image Gallery
Please click here to send your comments.
Pittsfield Branch
2359 Oak Valley Dr. - Google Maps
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
(734) 327-4200
Opened in March 2006, the Pittsfield Branch was designed to accommodate the needs of a library for a growing neighborhood while protecting the wetland on which it sits. The Pittsfield Branch is located on 5.74 acres of land on Oak Valley Drive in Pittsfield Township. It is a one-story building of approximately 14,600 square feet and is adjacent to the Ann Arbor Ice Cube arena.
The Branch serves as a community-based learning center that delivers superior customer service, primarily to the residents of the southwest quadrant of Ann Arbor and Pittsfield Township. The building and the surrounding landscape capitalize on environmental principles, thereby allowing the overall project to operate more in harmony with the ecosystem and the community in which it serves.
Read more about the Pittsfield Branch or visit our image gallery to see photos and drawings of the building.
Resources
The Branch houses an updated collection, consisting of traditional materials, such as books, magazines, and DVDs. Electronic resources include 28 public computer terminals, 18 of which are located in an Electronic Training classroom, and wireless internet access throughout the building. Along with the more traditional picture and chapter books, the Pittsfield Youth and Young Adult section features a sizable collection of Teen graphic novels, youth magazines and a group of Youth computer stations.
Spaces
While its primary mission is to deliver traditional library services, the Branch also serves as a true community center. This facility includes a quiet and comfortable reading area complete with fireplace that houses the branch's magazines and newspapers. Pittsfield also features a vending area with seating for 24 people, a program room for groups of up to 90 people, three study and tutor rooms, a children's play area, and exhibit space for local artists and organizations. For more information about how to rent the program room please visit the Room Rental Page.
Lockers
The Lockers are still out of order! We have completed the hardware to bring them back to life, but the software is still in progress. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!
Now your items can be ready for pickup whenever you are. Held items available for pickup at the Pittsfield Branch can be placed in lockers for after hours pickup. Simply follow the link in your hold notice email or at the bottom of your Requests and Holds list on the My Account page. Items will be placed in lockers outside of the building and will remain available for pickup there until the open of the library the next day.
Please click here to send your comments.
Exhibitions at the Ann Arbor District Library
Statement of Purpose:
The Ann Arbor District Library is an information center for the community and encourages the free expression of ideas essential to an informed citizenry. To accomplish this role, a primary objective of the Library is to serve as an active resource for learning, studying and contemplating ideas. In an effort to increase the visual education and artistic experience of all visitors, the Library’s exhibition program features local, regional and national artists as well as traveling exhibitions.
Requirements for the Use of Exhibit Space:
Potential exhibitors are required to submit an exhibit application along with images of the actual works to be considered for review, which will be examined by the Library Exhibits Committee.
The committee will consider a wide range of artistic expression in deciding on potential exhibitors. However, in deciding on the suitability of any work, the committee is mindful that the areas of display are used for normal library activity and will be viewed by all segments of the community and all age groups.
The Library does not endorse the beliefs or viewpoints of topics that may be the subject of library exhibits, whether library-initiated or sponsored by an individual or group from within the community. The following disclaimer will be placed on each exhibit case – “The acceptance of any exhibit by the Library does not imply endorsement of the content of the exhibit.”
Exhibit space may not be used for advertising or for commercial enterprises or political candidates.
The Library reserves the right to decline any application that does not promote or is inconsistent with the Library’s educational mission or based on time, place and manner considerations reasonably tailored to the mission and operations of the Library. The Library Director reserves final approval over any recommendations of the Library Exhibits Committee. The Library Director reserves the right to request the exhibitor to make changes to the exhibit as required by the Library.
Policy Adopted: December 12, 1995
Revisions Adopted: July 16, 2001
Revisions Adopted: February 16, 2009
Ann Arbor District Library Privacy Statement Policy
This document details the assurances and intentions of the Ann Arbor District Library's (AADL) approach to privacy.
Information Collection and Use
AADL is the sole user of the information collected on our website or at our facilities. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. AADL collects information from our users at several different points.
Internet Use
In order to use the Internet stations at an AADL branch, a user must provide his/her name and address and show valid identification. This information is only used in the event that the user breaks one of the AADL rules of behavior during his/her session. The information collected is destroyed daily. No logs are kept as to what content is viewed during a session.
Obtaining a Library Card
In order to obtain a library card, patrons must provide photo ID and proof of current address.
If patrons choose to provide an email address on their library card application, this information will only be used to deliver AADL notices. Email addresses will never be sold to or shared with others.
Minor's Library Records
The person who becomes liable for payment for or return of the materials identified in the library record of a minor by signing the minor’s application for a library card shall designate to whom the minor’s library record may be released by filling out the Release of Minor Child’s Library Record section on the application.
Checking out Materials
When an AADL cardholder checks out an item, that information is recorded for the purpose of determining due dates and overdue fines. Holds are also recorded as part of a cardholder's record. However, when the book is returned, or the reserved item is picked up and returned, this information is removed from the patron's record by default. Patrons may choose to have their checkout history recorded for their own use. This information can only be accessed by the cardholder via aadl.org. Patrons have the ability to delete any or all records from their history, or turn off the recording of checkouts at any time.
Board Meetings
In order to make a citizen's comment at an AADL Board Meeting, a citizen will be asked to present his/her name and address. The information given will not be used in any other way.
Donating to the Library
When a donation is given to AADL, we will record the donor's name, address and type and amount of gift to comply with AADL auditing procedures and to issue the donor a receipt for tax purposes. This information will never be given or sold to other organizations. Donor information will be used internally to further AADL development efforts.
Comment Cards and Online Forms
When a patron fills out a comment card or online comment form, he/she can optionally provide his/her name, address, and email address. This enables AADL to respond to patrons’ comments. This information will not be shared or sold to other organizations.
Log Files
When a user visits our website, his/her IP address is recorded. We use this information to analyze trends, administer the site, determine popularity of content, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
Sharing
We may share aggregated information, such as traffic rates and browser types, with the public. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.
Links
The AADL web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that AADL is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by AADL.
Newsletter
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address.
Surveys
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of AADL.
Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will send a notice to the email addresses given to us by our users. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.
Policy adopted by the Ann Arbor District Library Board June 11, 2001
Revisions adopted November 21, 2005, June 19, 2006 and February 17, 2014
Library Policies
Frequently Requested Policies:
Behavior in the Public Sectors of the Ann Arbor District Library
