Perkins&Will Cracks Open a 1967 Brutalist Library to Build Western University's New Learning Commons

John Andrews' D.B. Weldon Library arrived on Western University's campus in 1972 as a provocation. Where the institution had built almost exclusively in Collegiate Gothic, Andrews delivered six storeys of poured-in-place concrete, post-tensioned slabs carried on precast single tees, and oblong corner towers housing stairs and mechanical shafts. For half a century the building did its job as a print repository. But print repositories are no longer what universities need from a library, and the deep floor plates that once stored stacks became obstacles to the kind of daylit, collaborative, interdisciplinary space students now expect.

Rather than demolish and rebuild, Perkins&Will's Toronto office (working alongside local practice Cornerstone Architecture) chose to retrofit. The result is a project worth studying not for any single formal gesture but for the intelligence of its trade-offs: high-density basement storage frees upper floors, a new service spine threaded through existing concrete secures future adaptability, and a 30% reduction in energy use proves that keeping the carbon already embedded in a structure is itself a climate strategy. Phase 1 alone renovated roughly 90,000 square feet at a cost of $15 million, and the lessons it offers apply far beyond southwestern Ontario.

Reopening the Great Hall

The most consequential move in the renovation is also the simplest: reconnecting the Great Hall to its previously enclosed mezzanine and reinstating a curved stair that had been demolished. Where the original scheme sealed the mezzanine off, the new section punches through to create a two-storey student learning commons flooded with borrowed light. Globe pendant fixtures drop into Andrews' deep ceiling coffers, turning a structural liability into a lighting asset. The coffers' rhythmic grid now reads as ornament rather than burden.

At ground level, the entry Community Room does triple duty: lectures and symposia during the term, quiet study during exams, and informal gathering the rest of the time. Furniture clusters in green and black replace the old cubicles and oversized reference desk. The decluttering is not merely aesthetic. It is a wayfinding strategy, opening sightlines across the deep floor plate so that a newcomer can orient themselves without signage.

Materiality: Warming the Concrete

The palette is deliberately restrained: white oak cladding for the new curved stair and millwork, grayish-white porcelain tiles replacing worn linoleum, and FSC-certified wood products throughout. Against Andrews' raw concrete cores and coffered ceilings, the oak reads warm without competing. Glazed partitions enclose the few cellular spaces that remain, pulling them inboard so that meeting and gathering areas can claim the perimeter windows and skylights.

There is a quiet discipline here. The architects did not try to soften Brutalism; they made it legible again. By stripping away decades of ad hoc partitioning they revealed the structural logic that Andrews designed in the first place, then layered just enough new material to signal that someone is paying attention to the building's next fifty years.

The Service Spine and Deep Energy Retrofit

Threading a new mechanical, electrical, and IT service spine through an existing concrete frame is surgical work. The spine centralizes systems that were previously scattered, making future upgrades a matter of accessing one corridor rather than tearing open multiple floors. Upgraded HVAC equipment and LED lighting drive the 30% energy reduction, while high-efficiency plumbing fixtures cut water use by over 40%. Glazing upgrades and improved thermal envelopes round out a deep energy retrofit that treats the existing embodied carbon as a resource, not a liability.

This is the argument the project makes most forcefully: the greenest building is the one already standing. A new structure of equivalent size would have generated millions of tons of carbon emissions before a single student walked through its doors. The retrofit inverts that equation, spending modest capital to unlock performance gains that compound over decades.

Universal Design and Biophilia During Canadian Winters

The design team engaged over 250 stakeholders, including Western's Accessibility Committee, to shape a universal design approach that addresses both physical and neurological diversity. Barrier-free access, ergonomic seating, and intuitive wayfinding replace the old labyrinth of cubicles and barriers. Acoustic treatments create zones of varying intensity so that group collaboration and focused solo work can coexist on the same floor plate.

Interior planting areas introduce biophilic elements in a climate where outdoor greenery is buried under snow for months at a time. It is a small gesture, but in a building whose deep floor plates can feel cavernous, strategically placed greenery compresses the visual scale and connects occupants to something living. Combined with improved air quality and maximized daylight, these moves reframe the library as a place of well-being, not just productivity.

Plans and Drawings

The section drawing reveals the terraced logic Andrews baked into the original form: each level steps back, and the renovation capitalizes on that geometry by pushing planted areas and reading spaces toward the resulting light wells. The ground floor plan color-codes zones for social interaction, collaboration, and focused work, making legible the gradient from noisy to quiet that organizes the entire building. On the fifth floor, open workstations, private offices, and meeting rooms are arrayed to demonstrate that the same structural grid can accommodate very different program densities. Together, the drawings show a retrofit that works with the host building rather than against it.

Why This Project Matters

Universities worldwide are wrestling with the same question: what do you do with a mid-century library designed around book storage when books are migrating to servers? The usual answer is either demolition or a timid cosmetic refresh. Weldon Library charts a third course. It treats the original architecture as intellectual property worth preserving, invests in infrastructure that secures adaptability for decades, and delivers measurable performance gains in energy, water, and accessibility. Phase 1 proves the concept; subsequent phases will extend it across all 220,000 square feet.

The broader takeaway is about ambition in constraint. Working inside a Brutalist frame, with post-tensioned slabs and deep coffers that cannot simply be moved, Perkins&Will found latitude for genuine spatial invention: the reopened Great Hall, the reinstated curved stair, the service spine that anticipates technologies that do not yet exist. If the measure of a good renovation is that it makes you see the original building more clearly while imagining its future more vividly, Weldon succeeds on both counts.

Weldon Library Revitalization by Perkins&Will with Cornerstone Architecture, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. Approximately 220,000 sq ft (Phase 1: ~90,000 sq ft). Construction 2021–2023. Photography by Scott Norsworthy.

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