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04 GUAYAQUIL’S MUNICIPAL LIBRARY EXPANSION & RENOVATION

Part I

Location: Guayaquil, Ecuador

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Spring 2019

Guayaquil’s Municipal Library Expansion & Renovation is a thesis project that seeks to bring heritage buildings back to life.

The existing Municipal Library is located in the heart of the city of Guayaquil, but in the last 20 years it has been lacking space to store its books, this has forced the library to close down lecture rooms and turn them into storage rooms.

This thesis focuses to solve this problem in two different ways: the renovation and adaptive reuse of the existing building into a library/museum, and the construction of a new building that will serve as a library and main storage.

The location of the new library was an opportunity to provide this cultural space to an area that was currently unattended. Based on research, the most suitable location is along the Francisco de Orellana Avenue, a major road in the city.

The new library design depicts a parametric facade based on the 1920s traditional dress, that is worn every year in all of the events organized by the Municipality of Guayaquil.

Mosaics were used as an analogy for the floor plans. Mosaics are commonly found as decoration elements under bridges and walls in Guayaquil. To get to the final shape, constant fragmentation and intersection exercises were done, leading to irregular shapes which were finally used for the floor plans.

Site Analysis: Urban Context

To ensure that the proposed site would be ideal for the project, an urban context study was done. The new building would be strategically located between government, commercial and hospitality buildings.

The site is also in close distance to institutional and educational buildings, making it very convenient for the proposed purpose.

Access and Circulation

The proposed site is located along a major avenue called Francisco de Orellana. This avenue connects the northern outskirts of the city with the financial district.

The new library consists of a 3-story building and 2 underground stories for parking lots. Among the new services that this library would offer are bookstores, auditoriums, events venues, reading rooms for people that are visually impaired, coworking spaces, coffee shops, etc.

The project also includes the design of a park and public spaces surrounding the building. The design proposes to plant native trees like jacaranda, guachape and algarrobo.

All renders were created using Sketchup/Rhino 3D + V-ray + Photoshop

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