Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson once said (through a wily, precocious blond kid), “History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction.” The BKSK Architects team was recently selected to provide order and direction for the Center for Fiction’s new Brooklyn headquarters.
Relocating from Manhattan (where the center has been since its founding as the Mercantile Library in 1820), its new 17,000-square-foot facility will offer three inviting floors of resource-rich space to literary professionals and enthusiasts alike.
BKSK will enhance the center’s evolution into a Brooklyn-based institution, using the new structure as a vehicle for nurturing literary appreciation within the borough and beyond. It will include a bookstore at the pedestrian level, auditorium space for book talks and educational programming, expanded meeting areas, flexible workspaces for reading and writing, and administrative support space.
Design elements such as 19th-century-inspired metalwork, warm natural materials, and lively environmental graphics will stimulate a welcoming and multipurpose setting. Sustainable best practices also guide the design, which will meet or exceed LEED-CI Silver standards.
“The primary aim of the design is to enhance the goals of the center itself,” explained BKSK partner-in-charge Julie Nelson. “We are creating a locally rooted framework for timeless stories: those already written, those currently being put on paper, and others yet that are spontaneously occurring between New Yorkers and the world around them.”
The relocation represents a major strategic move in addition to the geographic one. The planned adjacency with Mark Morris Dance Group, 651 ARTS, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Theatre for a New Audience will make
the growing Brooklyn neighborhood a more vibrant cultural hotbed than ever before.
“Our programs for readers and writers of all levels are thriving,” said Noreen Tomassi, executive director of the center. “We believe those programs will be more relevant than ever in our new home.”
Located within a new 11-story building that broke ground in September, the new facility’s doors will open late 2017.