Louisville Magazine

FEB 2015

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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76 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.15 tailspinalefest.com T hink of the new Southwest Regional Library as a big blanket fort. "Te kind you would build in your room with sheets when you were a kid," says Colin Drake of JRA Architects, which collaborated on the $14.5 million project with a Minneapolis architecture frm. "A blanket fort was an intimate space within a larger space. It was also a place for learning and exploration. And everyone knows that feeling of being under the sheets reading with a fashlight." Much of the inspiration came from Craig Buthod, who recently retired as the director of the Louisville Free Public Library, a position he'd held since 1998. "A library," Buthod likes to say, "is the last truly democratic space that exists within a community." In 2006, Buthod visited the Royal Library of Alexandria in Egypt ("Te most powerful piece of public architecture I've ever experienced," he says) and returned to Louisville with ideas about what a library could be. "After all my travel and research, I found that the best public buildings are those that leave you uplifted and moved," Buthod says. He told the architects that "the model of a library will change dramatically in the coming years," meaning the design needed to be "on the cutting edge of technology." "It was evident that what used to be a 'Shhhhh! Be quiet!' atmosphere is now more open and free," Drake says. "So the question "It was evident that what used to be a 'Shhhhh! Be quiet!' atmosphere is now more open and free," Drake says.

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