Dumbarton Oaks Research Library: a 21st-century transformation

Extract

Leaving a 200-year-old building that was never meant to house a library for a 21st-century facility that strives to address the library’s future needs for 25 years doesn’t seem like a daunting task. But mix together sentimental attachments, institutional idiosyncrasies, federal government review of a private building, historic landmark status, and the administrative merger of four library collections into a single library, and life gets interesting – especially when your architect is Robert Venturi, Mr. ‘Learning from Las Vegas’.