Anythink Nature Library | Thornton, Colorado

Project Overview

The Anythink Nature Library is a 33,000-square-foot public library in Thornton, Colorado, built as the nation’s first library dedicated entirely to nature education and environmental connection. Opened to the public on August 8, 2026, the team welcomed over seven thousand visitors at the grand opening event. The $43.9 million project was developed by the Anythink Library District, designed by Davis Partnership Architects with structural engineering by Thornton Tomasetti, and built by GH Phipps Construction.

Organized around the concept of helping visitors “find their place in nature,” the building is divided into zones exploring nature from different vantage points and blends traditional library services with hands-on environmental programming. Interior spaces include a nature and art/science lab, a sunroom, a dark room for quiet reflection, gathering areas, and a living plant wall, while the surrounding grounds offer exterior gardens, an open-air kinship garden, a water flow and mud pit, and an amphitheater. The library also houses one of the Anythink system’s largest TryIts collections, offering roughly 550 experiential items across 65 categories, including birdwatching kits, wildlife cameras, hiking gear, microscopes, and gardening equipment, with a long-term goal of growing the collection past 1,500 items.

The design was shaped by the Environmental Kinship Model and guided by an advisory council of Indigenous and Native American leaders from the Denver metro area, reflecting years of community collaboration. Sustainability was a central design driver: the building is pursuing LEED Gold certification and is intended to become one of Thornton’s most energy-efficient buildings, featuring a geothermal heating and cooling system, a fully electric mechanical system, more than 300 rooftop solar panels, bird-safe glass, and water-saving fixtures throughout.

Why CPP

The Anythink Nature Library is a single-story building with stepped roofs and a centrally located courtyard space. It includes entrances along the east façade and the outdoor plaza space to the south. The building is situated on a 15-acre campus adjacent to the 140-acres of open space and a one-mile trail loop connecting directly into the surrounding open space. Ensuring pedestrian comfort was particularly important for this project because the library also hosts multiple community gardens, a café with outdoor seating, and a mud pit for kids to play and connect with nature. The library also has a central courtyard and the team wanted to ensure wind comfort with the unique roof architecture.

The roof’s unique shapes and slopes also indicated that the design team should conduct a wind load assessment study to ensure efficient and reliable design. Loads obtained from building code provisions cannot account for the effects of significantly irregular building shapes, nor for the effects of wind channeling or buffeting caused by nearby structures or terrain.

At the entrance to the library, the roof overhangs significantly to create a canopy illusion with a tree-like structure holding it up in the center. The design was built to resemble a Cottonwood which is the largest native broadleaf tree to Colorado. This design is a focal point for the Anythink Nature Library, and CPP was able to find that the wind loading pressure of the overhang is in acceptable range.

Members of the CPP team were excited to visit Anythink Nature Library for a tour on their first week open. It was great to see a design we tested come to life.