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The aluminum sunshade screening the south-southeast facing curtain wall reflects 80% of the glare outside but looks transparent from within -- rather like a bus wrap. Libraries face a unique challenge of wanting enough daylight to be bright, but not so much as to endanger the collections. A typical approach would be to have the glass curtain face north (to the right here), offering softer light, but that would have meant turning a blank wall towards busy Rhode Island Avenue on this tight flatiron site. The design team spent a day on the site testing out various screens, to see which would offer optimal light for reading.

The plentiful glass also makes a clear welcoming statement to the neighborhood, particularly since the predecessor library was a nearly-windowless concrete bunker.

Although there's no "1% for art" requirement in DC, the room is wrapped with a tinted photocollage of neighborhood faces (visitors to the interim library during construction of the building) and a quote from Obama's inaugural address: “We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”