Photo © Jon Miller | Hedrich Blessing
The Chicago Public Library’s Chinatown branch, an elegant departure from the city’s past practice of constructing cookie-cutter public buildings, has won a national design award from the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Association.
The branch, which opened last fall at 2100 S. Wentworth Ave., is one of seven winners of the 2016 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards, the architects’ group announced Tuesday. A rounded triangle with fins that shade its interior from the sun, the building was designed by Brian Lee of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago and executed by the Chicago office of Darien based Wight & Co.