Cerritos Millennium Library

Architect: Charles Walton Associates, AIA; Jim Nardini
General Contractor: CW Driver
Consultant: AMT Systems Inc.
Installation: AMT Systems Inc.
Programming: AMT Systems Inc.

Description of Project:

Cerritos Millennium Library is a three-story city facility designed to make twenty-first century technology accessible and easily available in a variety of themed learning center environments throughout the building. It is the first titanium building in the United States, and increases the existing library in size to over 82,000 square feet. The first floor features a children’s area with its own multimedia theater, a 15,000-gallon saltwater aquarium, a replica space shuttle, and a full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Further down the “Main Street” walkway is the large and comfortable reading room. Other floors feature a large computer resource center, individual study rooms, traditional book collections, large and small conference centers, and other meeting facilities. The new Library is filled with communications and multimedia electronics to meet the variety of known and expected requirements of library patrons who will use the facility not only as a resource center for printed and electronically stored materials, but as a gathering space for community, business and family occasions.

AMT Systems designed, programmed and installed sound and video systems throughout the building to provide motion and graphics projection, surround sound reproduction, playback of audio and video sources, interconnection with building-wide recording and archival storage and computer network facilities, and system access and control via touchscreen for user-friendly operation of even complex systems.

The Children’s Theater and the Third-floor Conference and training rooms all feature LCD graphics-capable video projection, 5.1 surround sound playback speaker systems, playback transports including DVD, VHS, Cassette, and CD, wireless and hard-wired microphone systems with separate sound reinforcement ceiling speaker systems, video cameras tied to recording and archival storage systems, and touchscreen based access and control systems capable of operating not only the sound and video systems, but projection screens, window shades, and lighting systems.

Other rooms feature plasma displays, whiteboards with computer interfaces for storage and recall, and both audio and video conferencing systems capable of interfacing with other facilities at City, State, and World levels.