The Boston Globe’s “Travel” section chooses the Hunt Library as one of the nation’s “5 novel libraries.”

The James B. Hunt Jr. Library was honored with the Non-Residential Green Design Award by the City of Raleigh at its sixth annual Environmental Awards celebration Monday evening, April 22.  The library was praised “for its sustainable design and technology that reduces energy use by 31 percent.”   The ceremony was held in the Nature Research Center wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. More than 250 people attended, leaving standing-room only.

The library is expected to receive LEED Silver certification, making it the fourth LEED certified building on campus.  See the Hunt Library sustainability site for more information about how the Hunt Library represents NC State’s commitment to leading by example in advancing sustainability as a moral imperative and as an economic advantage.

News 14 Carolina profiles the new Hunt Library, a space that Chancellor Randy Woodson explains in the piece “is about innovation. It’s about transformation and it’s about economic development.”

The official magazine of the American Institute of Architects says that Snøhetta and the NCSU Libraries “set a new benchmark for technologically-sophisticated collaborative learning spaces with the design of the new Hunt Library.”

ABC11’s Elaina Athans’ video coverage of the April 3 official dedication of the Hunt Library observes that  “jobs are the driver of this facility” and concludes with Chancellor Randy Woodson that “this is a campus you come to to do amazing things–and here you do them in an amazing space.”

WRAL’s Renee Chou explores the Hunt Library’s place as the new heart for NC State’s Centennial Campus, ending with Chancellor Randy Woodson’s observation that “it’s about transformation, it’s about economic development–we wanted a space that says that to the world.”

See the video at http://www.wral.com/news/education/video/12301786/#/vid12301786

The News & Observer explores the over 75 different chairs in more than 100 colors in the Hunt Library, including the new Hunt chair designed by the Thos. Moser firm.   According to reporter Renee Elder, “the halls offer unexpected nooks where groups of students gather. Flexible seating permits outside-the-box interaction, and open spaces seem to invite casual sprawling. Together, these things make the 221,000-square-foot building . . . seem almost cozy.”

Read more at http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/04/03/2800002/custom-designed-hunt-chair-at.html

On April 3, 2013, North Carolina State University will officially dedicate the James B. Hunt Jr. Library.  Setting a new benchmark for architecturally inspiring and technologically sophisticated learning and collaborative spaces, the Hunt Library is designed to be a decisive competitive edge for the university, an institution that has forged its reputation by teaching students to live on the fore of change and enabling its researchers to do transformative work.

A central tenet of the Hunt Library is to democratize access to the technologies that are driving our economy and culture.

Five huge Christie MicroTiles high-definition display walls give faculty and students hands-on experience with the large-scale visualization tools that are reshaping how we create and view data and digital media.  The Game Lab supports NC State’s Digital Games Research Center by providing an experimental commons to explore collaborative game design and the role of gaming in education and training.

The library’s Teaching and Visualization Lab and the Creativity Studio offer unique visualization and simulation capabilities that help define the next generation of teaching and learning spaces.  3-D printing and extensive digital media production facilities enable rapid iteration for prototyping and give students and faculty more of the tools they need to lead tomorrow’s workforce.  State-of-the-art videoconferencing and telepresence technologies enable collaboration with colleagues across the state and around the world.  And technology permeates all of the group study rooms throughout the building where students gather constantly to learn and work together.

The Hunt Library’s robotic bookBot automated retrieval system is capable of holding two million volumes in 1/9 the space of conventional shelving. Virtual Browse, which brings serendipitous discovery to the 21^st century, allows users to see a virtual shelf of the materials that are classified near the resources found by their initial search.

Early projects that have already capitalized on the library’s technologies include an immersive simulator to train naval ROTC midshipmen to operate the bridge of a modern warship, a 3-D recreation of St. Paul’s Cross during John Donne’s tenure at the cathedral that demonstrates the impact of 17^th- century sermons as they were actually delivered, a student-created video game based on the Hunt Library’s book circulation patterns, and prototypes of a range of engineering projects including tactile models to allow the visually impaired to navigate complex traffic intersections.

The bold architecture of the building itself reflects its bold purpose: to provide the inspiring spaces that encourage future leaders to learn, work, and create more brilliantly.  Recently named one of the ten most innovative architectural firms in the world by Fast Company, Snøhetta—the Hunt Library’s lead designer—has been honored with the Mies van der Rohe Prize for Contemporary Architecture and the European Award for Urban Public Space.  The firm has won international acclaim for such projects as the Library of Alexandria, the Oslo Opera House, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum Pavilion, and the redesign of New York City’s Times Square.  Executive architects Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee are responsible for some of the most memorable buildings in North Carolina.

There is perhaps no library anywhere that has been more consciously crafted with what Snøhetta principal Craig Dykers has called “the unseen aspects of place-making”—the ability for the architecture to create spaces that encourage collaboration, reflection, creativity, and awe.  The inspirational impact of the new building is reflected in the more than 1,700 Instagram photos that the NC State community has uploaded to the My #HuntLibrary social media site since the library opened on January 2, 2013.

The Hunt Library serves both as NC State’s second main library and as the intellectual and social heart of the university’s Centennial Campus. Named the nation’s top research park in 2007, Centennial Campus is a nexus of collaboration where students and faculty work with more than sixty corporate and governmental partners to craft the innovations that will shape tomorrow.

“This building was designed from the start to be an icon, a dramatic representation of how transformational technology and a commitment to the growth of our community will thrust NC State University even further into the foreground,” explains Chancellor W. Randolph Woodson. “It embodies what NC State stands for, a beacon for technology and transformation in the 21^st century.”

“Our vision was to give NC State a signature library that would help us recruit the very best students and the very best faculty and to serve the community as an inspiring place of excellence and passion and ideas and vision,” concludes Susan K. Nutter, vice provost and director of the NCSU Libraries.  “You cannot be in this building without realizing that something very important is happening at this university.”

Results magazine explains how the new Hunt Library “harnesses the tools of the digital age to spark an innovation revolution.”

Complex magazine’s Art&Design website has ranked the new Hunt Library as one of the “25 coolest college libraries” in the world in a list that includes a range of buildings from beautifully traditional spaces such Trinity College Library in Dublin to the stunningly ultra-modern University of Indonesia Central Library in Jakarta.