Sedgewick Library

Location:

1958 Main Mall

Date:

 

Architect:

 

Cost:

 

Sources of funds:

 

Original construction

1973 Rhone and Iredale $3,894,808UBC's annual capital budget

Architectural features:

This building is below the ground level with two mirrored skylights in which one for the main stairwell and the other to bring the natural light to the bottom floor which housed the stacks. One of its unique feature are drum caissons.It was constructed of 2' precast octagonal concrete columns, which supported 2'6" x 4' precast concrete beams,in turn supported precast double T-beam floor panels 7'4" wide. Its underground design was intended to preserve the main mall, its oak trees and the traditional gardens which formed the central of arts campus.It has a concrete, rectangular structure and 8 steel caissons, each of 30 feet in diameter, acting as a giant plant pot for the trees and run down through both storeys of the building.

Name History:

This building is named after the former professor and head of the Department of English Garnet G. Sedgewick.

Construction Type:

reinforced in-situ and precast concrete

Notes:

It is designed to fill the need of a undergraduate library in which another library is created outside from the Main Library. It won the 1970 Award of the Canada, the highest architectural award in Canada, the national architecture award for its designer, Rhone and Iredale in 1973 and won the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada award for being the finest building constructed in the nation in 1972.

Sedgewick Library was absorbed into the new Walter C. Koerner Library in 1996.:

Sources:

Ceremonies Office;Coummunity Relations fonds (28-29); Fine Arts Pamphlet Files;Sedgewick Library sous-fonds; UBC Buildings(Campus Planning)

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