The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library | Murphy/Jahn Architects

Welcome to the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, where unique engineering and bold design come together at the heart of campus to foster intellectual discovery. The Mansueto Library creates new spaces and tools for collections, preservation, and collaboration. Designed by Helmut Jahn, its inviting research space includes the Grand Reading Room, where scholars from all disciplines can work under a soaring elliptical glass dome with views of the historic UChicago campus. The Mansueto Library can hold the equivalent of 3.5 million volumes, giving scholars and students immediate access to the materials they need for research. Mansueto’s high-density automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) requires just one-seventh of the space of regular stacks. When users request an item, a robotic crane retrieves the material within minutes. A cross-disciplinary collection of materials from the existing libraries on campus will be united in the Mansueto Library. By opening up space in other campus libraries, the Mansueto Library allows for the creation of new study areas and fresh opportunities for collaboration within the libraries’ walls. The Mansueto Library also houses state-of-the-art conservation and digitization laboratories that will preserve rare materials in their original form and through digitization. The digitization projects conducted here will enable research worldwide as well as innovative approaches to scholarly cooperation.