NYPL Visitor Center

The New York Public Library opened its new Visitor Center at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building in 2023. The center offers visitors a landing point to start their exploration of the library. Many people don’t realize that NYPL holds a vast collection of drawings, rare books, documents, illustrations and ephemera. Throughout the Visitor Center, Pure+Applied aimed to orient the visitor within the physical building and offer a glimpse into the vast collections within the library.

I served as Architectural Exhibition Designer for this project at Pure+Applied.

Pure+Applied worked with Tactile Studios to produce a section of the Stephen A. Schwarzman building. The model itself is tactile along with the braille and raised type on the label deck. The building model highlights the visitor pathway from the entrance to the main reading room and is accompanied by a touchscreen explaining the various spaces throughout the building.

Historic book stacks were repurposed to house a media array that showcases the various rooms and galleries throughout the building.

Tactile reproductions show the types of objects represented in the research collections. This tactile experience is paired with a digital touchscreen, designed by Upswell, where visitors can explore the connections between objects and hopefully be inspired to dive deeper into researching at the NYPL.