Studio O+A designed the Stevenson School Library with attention to noise limitation and diversified options for studying and collaboration in Pebble Beach, California.

One consequence of the digital age that has been to a great extent overlooked is the transformation of libraries. Public libraries began to wrestle with the balance between printed and digital resources a couple of decades ago, but school libraries have undergone an even more radical change. For a generation of students who have never known anything but the Internet, books in a library are little more than décor. At the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, students were using the space between stacks for storing backpacks and the books on the shelves as barriers behind which to hide.

Studio O+A’s challenge was to bring the library as a physical space into alignment with the workplace environments these kids will soon be entering and to understand what happens in a library now, how students study and conduct research. The goal was to redesign the library so that it serves those modern needs and maybe even begins a process of wooing young people back to books.

Design: Studio O+A
Photography: Kristina Cho