Located in the heart of North Carolina State University’s campus, the James B. Hunt Jr. Library is a multi-award-winning library that primarily serves students, faculty, and staff in engineering, textiles, and other science programs. To say that this library is state-of-the-art is an understatement. Housing 100 study rooms and technology-equipped spaces such as the Creativity Studio, Teaching and Visualization Lab, Game Lab, and Fishbowl, student interaction to support learning, research, and collaboration is celebrated. The James B. Hunt Jr. Library blurs the lines between quiet study spaces, social interaction, and 21st century technology.

Serving as the concrete contractor to Skanska USA on this LEED Silver certified project, Donley’s Concrete Group was responsible for the foundations, retaining walls, elevator core walls, slab-on-grade and slab-on-metal concrete decks. The elevated deck slabs required extremely high floor tolerances to accommodate the robot-driven bookBot automated book delivery system. Holding approximately 2 million books in 1/9 the space of conventional stacks, the bookBot is just 50′ wide, 160′ long and 50′ tall.

Driving the project’s critical path, the three elevator/stair cores were installed ahead of the structural steel, helping the steel erector maintain a very rigid schedule. Donley’s installed a tower crane to assist with the deep foundations and to supplement the elevator and stair cores.

This project is LEED Silver certified.