McLaughlin Library docomomo canada ONTARIO

View from the north (Mariana Esponda Cascajares)
The transparency of the entry and ground floor form an extension of dthe public realm from Winegard Walk (Mariana Esponda Cascajares)
The library compliments the MacKinnon Building and frames Winegard Walk (Mariana Esponda Cascajares)
The contrast of horizontal and vertical elements (Mariana Esponda Cascajares)
Textures of the board-formed concrete finishes (Mariana Esponda Cascajares)
The east facade with considerable depth and texture achieved by precast and poured-in place concrete
Sert's characteristic sparing use of primary colours

GALLERY ENTRY

McLaughlin Library

480 Gordon Street, Guelph, ON.

DESIGNER(S) Hancock Little and Calvert Associates, Sert Jackson and Associates Inc

CONSTRUCTED 1968

“This is the most muscular building on campus. There is an explicitly strong interplay between cast-in-place and precast elements here that creates an easy legibility of vertical circulation towers set against the horizontality of the stack floors. The vertical towers are highly textured cast-in-place, done in béton brut and using vertical, diagonal and horizontal boarding patterns.”

Ian Panabaker and Wilfred Ferwerda, “The University of Guelph,” in Concrete Toronto: a guidebook to concrete architecture from the fifties to the seventies, M. McClelland, ed. (Toronto, Coach House Books, 2007) 280-281.

Resources

McLaughlin Library