Tropical exterior colors beckon like a street fruit salad, public art tells the community’s story, and inside the San Ysidro Branch Library, an array of books, technology, work spaces and events engages the community with the emphasis on preparing young visitors for a rapidly changing world. Completed in 2019, the library marks a turning point. This striking contemporary building provides a concentrated burst of optimism in a place where the daily news often has to do with the challenges of being at the binational border.

Twenty minutes northeast, the Skyline Hills Branch Library, which opened in 2016 in the Skyline-Paradise Hills neighborhood, is another example of how an eye-catching library becomes a landmark to symbolize a community’s aspirations. Where San Ysidro’s branch is a well-proportioned assemblage of colorful boxes, Skyline Hills is a sleek, angular, monochromatic structure with knife-edge corners and a swooping roofline.

When Misty Jones was appointed San Diego’s public library director in 2014, architect Rob Quigley’s flagship San Diego Central Library had just opened after being in the works for a couple decades. It’s a milestone that signifies the city’s commitment to arts, culture and iconic architecture. Meanwhile, these two branches had been stalled for years due to usual obstacles such as finding funds and identifying sites. A big part of Jones’ mission was to move them forward.

Jones is all about getting to know a community in order to learn what it needs in a library. Each branch is the culmination of a multi-year effort to build consensus among citizens, community leaders, librarians, city planners, and elected officials. Various sites and existing buildings were considered and rejected. Along the way, citizens provided essential input. In both San Ysidro and Skyline Hills, Jones said, they helped choose from among three different design proposals, and she believes the libraries will become “anchor points” that provide a “renewed sense of community.”

This year, the branches are coming to life again following two years of COVID. Children, teens, parents and seniors are using them not only for books and reading but for all sorts of activities that provide social interaction, education and pure fun. The buzz of young people provides especially strong evidence that if you provide a cool alternative to other less healthy diversions, perhaps they will come.

Both libraries have plenty of books displayed on long rows of shelves in high-ceilinged reading rooms. San Ysidro includes a good selection in Spanish, while Skyline Hills stocks books in Tagalog for its Filipino population. But beyond books, these libraries offer a marked contrast to the branches many of us recall from childhood — in my case, a tiny adorable building that resembled a gingerbread house and had a sweet librarian eager to show us the latest children’s books.

Today’s best libraries, exemplified by this pair, are architecturally stunning destinations for all sorts of learning and activity. They feature dozens of public computer terminals and reliable wi-fi. “Maker spaces” are rooms equipped with tools to harness creativity and high-tech craft. There are 3D printers (from tiny Yodas to jewelry) and sublimation printers (images you apply to cups, T-shirts and other items), software for processing photos and video or designing digital images, even sewing machines often used by neighborhood women who supplement their incomes with cottage industries.

Identical in size at 15,000 square feet, the two branches couldn’t be more different in their architecture.

San Ysidro’s library is situated on Beyer Boulevard, close to several schools, near the San Diego Trolley station, within view of the hills of Tijuana. It’s only a few blocks off San Ysidro Boulevard, where gas stations, currency exchanges and other businesses advertise their prices in pesos, and many cars and trucks have Mexican license plates. The library is also near several public schools.

Residents wanted a contemporary design, not nostalgia.

“They did not want the Mission style of their old library,” said the branch’s architect Ernesto Vasquez of SVA Architects (the old branch, circa 1924, is nearby and repurposed as a teen center). SVA’s architecture calls to mind the designs of Mexican architects Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legoretta, who designed the Chula Vista Library, opened in 1995. Intense colors, Vasquez said, reflect the vibrant texture of the community, from fashion to food to art.

So does the public art by De La Torre brothers, in the form of large square panels on the exterior that resemble Mexican “papel picado” — perforated paper decorations — as well as two tall columns between the lobby and front desk. The columns are covered with back-lit transparencies of images from local history and various literature, and they are bridged by a beam of Cantera stone bearing European and Mesoamerican motifs. Inside the library, wall graphics and vivid hues animate the spaces, along with red reading chairs and carpeting of muted grays and reds in a soft pattern that resembles weathered wood.

In addition to various meeting and study rooms and staff offices, the San Ysidro branch has a large community events space with a wide bank of glass doors that opens to a garden courtyard. The library has hosted quinceañeras, along with visits by Sparkles the Clown and the Zovargo mobile zoo to promote children’s reading. The courtyard also serves as an outdoor theater, with a pristine white wall doubling as a screen.

Where San Ysidro’s building bursts with color, Skyline Hills, designed by Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, has a sleek industrial aesthetic, with its curved exterior walls, uplifted roofline and muted tones. The architecture plays off sweeping vistas that surround it, especially to the east, where the scenery includes tawny hills and peaks such as Mount Miguel.

This soaring aesthetic is enhanced with public art by Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades, in the form of aluminum sculptures mounted on exterior walls and suspended around interior ceiling lights that depict flying creatures such as birds, butterflies and moths. The winged art creates a sense of flow and movement. Branch Librarian Azalea Ebbay notes that one hanging piece evokes moths attracted to a light bulb, an apt metaphor for the library’s mission. Thoughtful lighting is key to this building. Thanks to tall banks of glass and prismatic skylights that disperse daylight, interior spaces are flooded with natural light that is good for reading and minimizes electrical bills.

Both branches get high marks for “green” design and engineering. San Ysidro earned a Gold LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, while Skyline Hills is rated LEED Silver (Platinum is the highest). The ratings are based on considerations such as impact on climate change, human health, water resources, biodiversity, natural resources and supporting the “green” economy. Skyline Hills incorporates Eco HQ active chilled beams — long narrow metal inserts integrated into the high ceilings, to condition the air and cool the building efficiently and quietly.

The two libraries also benefit from thoughtful drought-tolerant landscapes. Softening the edges of the Skyline Hills building, the landscape plan includes plants ranging from fan palms to red-berried toyon, red bottlebrush, yellow cat’s claw and tall gray and green grasses. It’s a far cry from the standard lawns and hedges around branch libraries of yesteryear.

Today, the city of San Diego’s library system includes 36 libraries, and the county of San Diego oversees 33 more.

“We’re kind of in this funding whirlwind,” said Jones, who recently attended the groundbreaking for a $26 million branch in Pacific Highlands Ranch, near Del Mar. Expansion of the Ocean Beach library received $4.5 million in state funding in early July, and plans are moving ahead for a $24 million 25,000-square-foot “flagship” library in San Carlos and a $20 million branch in Oak Park.

In San Ysidro and Skyline Hills, the libraries are big breakthroughs for their communities, architectural landmarks that infuse a new sense of pride. They also make a solid case that even in this techno millennium, books still have a place.

Skyline Hills attracted 24,360 visitors and circulated 10,595 books through the first six months of this year, while San Ysidro had 23,810 visitors (it expects 55,000 a year) and circulated 15,942 books. One of the coolest library initiatives is “My 1st Library Card,” where smiling children pose for pictures with their new cards. All sorts of these photos are posted online, and what better way to send a message that a lifelong love of books and reading can begin early.

Sutro writes about architecture and design. He is the author of the guidebook “San Diego Architecture” as well as “University of California San Diego: An Architectural Guide.” He wrote a column about architecture for the San Diego edition of the Los Angeles Times back in the day and has also covered architecture for a variety of design publications.

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