Frisco Public Library | Frisco, Texas | 2023

Architects: Gensler
Lead Architects: Justin Bashaw and Paul Manno
General Contractor: Byrne Construction Services
Client: The City of Frisco, Texas
Photographers: Photography by Connie Zhou

Frisco's first stand-alone library is a truly unique adaptive reuse endeavor, transforming an existing warehouse with soaring ceilings to become a civic cornerstone for the community. At more than 140,000 square feet, this tilt-wall structure was once used to manufacture rockets. Now, the building is given new life as a library, serving as a new source for inspiration and learning that speaks to the youthful optimism and innovation of Frisco.

Additionally, the facility fulfills the city's desire for a large, flexible building that facilitates dynamic, active learning and empowers its staff. The library's site context necessitated two entries: a ceremonial arrival to the north toward Frisco Square and a second west-facing entrance from where most guests will enter. To address the security and service challenges of a library with two access points, the design team developed a parti evocative of the Dogtrot style homes customary to the Blackland Prairie ecoregion of the 19th and early 20th centuries, connecting two entries with an interior breezeway.

This concept also establishes two distinctive portions of the building designated as secured, housing the community event space with program pieces rentable to the public after library hours, and unsecured, housing the library proper space including the collections, study/conference rooms, reading rooms, and a puppet stage. The design respects the site's history on the Blackland Prairie and celebrates the ecological history of the site; today, less than .1% of the Blackland Prairie remains.

The landscape design uses planting that is native to the site and provides bioswale water collection areas. The design team has also created an interpretive nature walk for library patrons to learn about the ecological history of the site, while rewilding of certain portions of the exterior reintroduces native Blackland Prairie vegetation.

Many sustainability measures were designed to reduce solar impact and lower the building's energy load. Additional strategies include recovering an abandoned clerestory to introduce natural lighting, a primary skin system on the west elevation that uses louvres to control glare but allow indirect light, and strategic placement of windows with most larger spans facing north, with east and west-facing façades protected with passive and automated shading systems.