Mitchell Book Arts Center











A library in a park, Westville’s Mitchell Library, expanded to include a paper mill, printing studios, and bookbinding classrooms, becoming the Mitchell Book Arts Center. 

Paper made from the leaves on site would become part of the buliding’s program and architecture.



















The flipside of book consumption being paper production, the addition took on a twin character in plan, and modeled its vertical volumes as reflections of the original library’s open reading room. A progression through three “clearings” could define the adapted building’s sectional character, and the flow of material through these spaces:



                   piles of leaves,
                   piles of paper,
                   piles of books.
























Existing concrete columns from the reading room and mill room transition to Cross Laminated Timber columns at the mezzanine level, leading to brighter, drier, and quieter ascending classrooms for the increasingly precise crafts of printing and bookbinding. 












Frame and deckles specified to the same architectural module as skylight panels could be attached, allowing papermaking experiments to filter light from above. The material completes a cycle, leaf paper again becoming the canopy.






























Spring 2026



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