Last week’s Wisconsin Library Association Conference was a whirlwind of great conversations, presentations, and opportunities to learn about innovative and community-centered library services. I had the opportunity to visit UW–Madison’s new Morgridge Hall — a tour that turned out to be one of the highlights of the week — along with iSchool alumni, partners, faculty, and friends.
Here’s the thing about Morgridge Hall: it’s easy to describe it in numbers. Seven stories. 327,000 square feet. The largest privately funded building in UW–Madison’s history, opened in fall 2025 at University and North Orchard. It’s also the greenest academic building on campus, certified LEED Platinum.
But numbers don’t tell you what it feels like to walk in.
The building was abuzz with students, faculty, and staff — a hive of activity on a weekday evening. Some students had claimed spots on the seventh-floor terrace, soaking up the last of the beautiful fall weather while they worked.
The library — the new School of Computer, Data, and Information Sciences Library — lives on the second floor, inside the Rebecca M. Blank Student Commons. It’s built around service: an information desk, open and reserve collections, flexible workspace. It’s the newest circulating location in the UW–Madison Libraries system, and it’s designed for students well beyond the computing school. That last part is the detail I keep coming back to.
The building itself is organized around a central, daylight-filled atrium the architects call “The Heart,” running vertically through every level. LMN Architects worked with Kahler Slater on it, and they leaned hard into biophilic design — warm wood, Wisconsin imagery, greenery inside and out. It doesn’t feel like a tech facility. It feels like somewhere you’d actually want to sit down and stay a while.
I got an individual tour, which meant real conversation with instructors and students instead of a walk-through. And then I got curious: does this library carry my books? My tour guide searched the catalog, and sure enough, they popped up! A nice full-circle moment. I tour libraries to feed my curiosity and learn what’s new, and there are my books, hopefully doing the same for someone else.
