Tucked among groves of oak and elm trees, an all-electric library expansion provides badly needed services for a growing community and serves as a platform for teaching water conservation.
In the Texas Hill Country, at the confluence of Cypress Creek and the Blanco River, the city of Wimberley has grown from a trading-post settlement into a travel destination, retirement hot spot and magnet for young families.
The city owes its existence to water, and its influence remains, in good times and bad.
“It often seems we are either in drought or we have a flood,” says Aileen Edgington, a trustee of the Wimberley Village Library District Board and chair of the Building Committee. “It’s one or the other, and it makes us very serious about water.”
The design process for the 8,960-square-foot expansion of Wimberley’s beloved 50-year-old library made the handling and conservation of water a core element of the new facility, which is meant to reflect, inspire and support the growing community. The expansion was years in development, requiring the support and resilience of a group of locals dedicated to creating an educational resource to serve the needs of a diverse region of 25,000 people.
Set amid oak and elm trees, the new all-electric structure doubles the size of the existing building, creating new youth and teen spaces and reading areas, a craft lab and demo kitchen, and a free-access multipurpose room for community use. Redirected stormwater forms a creek that flows under a pedestrian bridge, connecting the addition to the existing one-story, cottage-like library.
The expansion is one of the first projects in the state to incorporate the guidelines for a new program, One Water, focused on long-term water stewardship and conservation. One hundred percent of the water is managed on site through a system of retention basins, above-ground rainwater tanks and swales doubling as natural playgrounds. Rainwater and air-conditioning condensate are used for toilet flushing and irrigation. Rainwater tanks and bioretention basins make water a visible part of daily life.
“The library is very focused on educating everybody about what we have done with water, so they can do it, too,” Edgington says.
A Community Project
Wimberley’s founding at the merger of two waterways provided inspiration for the design, says LPA Director Cultural + Civic Jeremy Hart. The library reflects the community uniting to build something right for the site and the people in the region.
“The library’s design is the confluence of the existing structure, the new addition, the natural landscape, and community,” Hart says. “The coming together of people and nature served as the foundation for our approach to the plan.”
The 3.8-acre site was purchased a decade ago. The process of designing, fundraising and building support for the expansion required years of meetings, workshops and false starts. LPA was hired in 2021, bringing a multidiscipline team to the planning process, including in-house architects, interior designers, landscape architects and civil engineers.
“LPA listened very carefully to all the work that we had already done as a committee,” Edgington says. Discussions focused on the district’s immediate needs, while preserving the flexibility for future growth. Every element of the library’s operations and aspirations was on the table. “It was a very creative and fun experience,” Edgington says.
Ultimately, a concept for a two-story building was set aside in favor of a more efficient one-story design. “They designed something that will help us right now,” Edgington says. “That was a breakthrough.”
Water flow and mature oak trees informed the siting and building and sloping roof forms define the reading rooms while guiding and directing stormwater to stormwater collection cisterns.
The outdoor spaces, including the space between the buildings became active, programmable parts of the design. LPA’s landscape team worked with designers to preserve 104 mature live oak and elm trees while clearing only nine for construction. The building wends its way through the groves with strategic notches and turns, creating shaded outdoor spaces.
“When you look at the addition from the street or parking lot, it looks like it has been there for much longer because it nestles in with mature trees,” says LPA Director of Landscape Architecture Richard Bienvenu.
The library supports the community in many different ways, including youth programs and summer workshops that attract more than 200 people. The addition fits all the programming elements on the building committee’s wish list. This includes a large multipurpose room for the public to host meetings and events — a resource that the city lacked — and a dedicated, safe space for teenagers to be themselves, separate from the children’s area. The facility also includes a maker space, and a teaching kitchen with demonstration space for instructors and individual students.
They designed something that will help us right now, that was a breakthrough.”
Aileen Edgington, trustee of the Wimberley Village Library District Board
“Many people in the community like to share how they craft and cook,” LPA San Antonio Studio Director Sara Flowers says.
The modern addition connects to the original library building, which was renovated to include a new circulation desk, study rooms, and seating areas. The existing structure’s stone masonry construction and gable roofs informed the addition’s aesthetic and materiality, including the Texas limestone and panelized wood cladding.
“The addition doesn’t look like a newfangled building that was crammed against the library,” Flowers says.
The structures also maintain a visible environmental footprint. The addition’s orientation is optimized for the future installation of rooftop photovoltaic panels. With help of proper orientation, shading and abundant daylight from north-facing windows, the all-electric library is expected to use 91% less energy than an industry benchmark.
‘Chill-bump’ Moment
The new library was enthusiastically embraced by the community. Within the first four days of its April 1 opening, the expanded library surpassed circulation numbers for the entire month of February.
“It meets the needs that we have right now beautifully,” Edginton says.
Edgington affectionately refers to the opening of the project as “chill-bump material.” She distinctly recalls the first moment she stepped inside and found children and teens using the spaces.
“You walk in and you’re so struck with how light it is,” she says. “When I saw the kiddos were playing and teens were using the space, it was just chill bumps all over to see it being used and being loved.”
