Holabird & Root worked with the Northwestern University School of Law to study the reallocation and renovation of the entire Law Library and the School’s Administrative and Support Function spaces, which are currently scattered throughout the School’s downtown Chicago facility. Law libraries have experienced a major transformation, due in part to both the digital information age and accreditations removing focus on the volume of physical collections. Holabird & Root was tasked with how to answer what the Law Library of the future should accomplish, how it should function, and how it should engage its users. Pivotal to answering these questions was the need to collect and synthesize the vast amounts of information that come not only from the physical spaces, but also from the students, faculty, and staff that interact with these spaces on a daily basis.

As part of this effort, Holabird & Root provided master planning, programming, and concept design for specific scenarios in the Law School Complex that influence anywhere between 70,000-square-feet up to 125,000-square-feet.  When looking at how areas, whole departments, or even the entire Law Library could shift within the complex, it’s important to understand both the moving pieces and those not involved in the project at all.  This led the project team to conduct detailed programming and interview sessions with each of the nine individual school departments to better understand their operations, workflows within and between departments, and to identify which portions should be forward facing and student centered. This effort led to newly discovered relationships + workflow efficiencies, and has been instrumental in assisting the project team in identifying the highest and best use of each corner of the school’s dynamic urban footprint.