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Dr. Strangelove Finds Home In Cold War Relic

Burrowed 50 feet into a mountain near Washington, D.C., a once secret, nuclear-blast-proof bunker has been transformed into the Library of Congress’s new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The facility, seen here during construction, opened today (top). A team of designers and engineers from BAR Architects and SmithGroup added a three-story window all along the bunker’s main elevation to help infuse interior spaces with daylight (middle). Public spaces, including the building’s lobby, are located closest to the window wall (above). Openings cut into the former bunker’s concrete, blast-proof walls allow daylight to penetrate deeper into the building (right).

The nonprofit Packard Humanities Institute purchased the decommissioned bank bunker at Mount Pony in Culpeper, Va., for $5.6 million in 1998 and then funded its $155 million transformation, donating the facility to Congress last week—the largest gift ever made to the legislative branch. The 415,000-square-foot complex now provides space for preserving 6 million items from the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. These items were previously scattered throughout seven locations nationwide.

BAR’s Earl Wilson says that one of the key design challenges was ensuring that librarians and conservationists have access to daylight. Although 80 percent of the structure is below grade, the designers located “people spaces” near a curving, three-story-tall window along the building’s rear elevation, opposite the main entry. Openings punched into the 16- to 18-inch-thick concrete, blast-proof interior walls help channel natural light into the inner rooms.

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