Young & Ayata Turns Library Shelves Into the Walls of a Study Room
Young & Ayata reworks a study room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through reclaimed shelving, patterned timber and a ceiling of light.
A reading room asks relatively little of its occupants: find a place, open a book, stay awhile. Its architecture has to support that unhurried attention. At New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Young & Ayata’s completed 2026 renovation of the Nolen Study Room approaches this task through the surfaces that surround the reader.
The roughly 89-square-metre room belongs to the Thomas J. Watson Library. Existing wooden shelves are reused as wall cladding, with CNC-milled patterns referring to book marbling and the mirrored grain of bookmatched timber. Recessed aluminium shelving sits within the thickened walls. A luminous ceiling replaces the earlier suspended ceiling, giving the room an even, glowing upper boundary.
The material choice gives the project a connection to the library that goes beyond displaying books. Shelves that once held the collection become the room’s enclosing surface. Their new role changes how the timber is encountered: a practical support becomes a patterned background to study.
In the photographs, the pale ceiling and more intricate walls establish different kinds of attention. The upper surface reads as a continuous field; the timber rewards a closer look. It is a useful balance for a space where visual character must coexist with concentration.
The architects describe a room suited to individual research as well as seminars, workshops and small events. The redesign acknowledges the library’s 1964 interiors while giving their materials another life.
What makes the intervention worth considering is its scale. It does not need a new wing to change the experience of a cultural institution. A room’s light, enclosure and material associations can be enough to establish a distinct place within it.
Project documentation and images: Young & Ayata. Interior photography by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of The Met; material study and drawings from the studio’s project page.
