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What if ... ... A library had a hill ? Would it create a greater desire to learn? ... The park paths transformed into a public tree house? Would it bring back your inner child? ... A subway opened directly to the library? Would books become a part of your daily commute?
Produced
with the educational
guidance of Jim Williamson and Luben Dimcheff In the spring of 2011 and the spring of 2012
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Stockholm Library
‘A Library and the Hill’, Stockholm Sweden
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The extension to Asplund’s Stockholm Public Library would have to respond to the modern day challenges facing a public institution. Through technology, the search for information is no longer confined to the physicality of a building. The internet could facilitate the dispersal of information independent of location. With this in mind, the role of the library must go beyond a space to archive/ collect the written word. Today, the library is also a representation of a city. Arguably closer to a museum than a traditional “library”, understood as a place for storing/archiving
Stockholm Library
Latitudinal section
Latitudinal section
Latitudinal section
Latitudinal section
Latitudinal section
books and as the active/ constant study of the written and spoken word in the search for knowledge. Today, the library is often also a tourist attraction. The function has shifted, no longer including the books and inducing to educational/ enlightening exploration but rather a minimal collection of written words and plenty of tourists whose sole purpose is witnessing the structure. In determining the defining factors of the proposed library, a site characteristic stood out: a hill for a site. The Hill brought the site a unique opportunity not only as a design element but also as a metaphorical element, the relation between knowledge and education. Within the design, the Hill plays a unique role as it continues within the building and into the subway level. This underground hill offers visitors an opportunity to sit, read a book, and enjoying nature while waiting for your train. In response to the Asplund’s Stockholm library, a direct relationship is designed between the primary spaces and the secondary spaces found in the library. In simplifying the design to it’s most elemental shapes, the structure is a cylinder encased in a square box, In plan, the circle within the square. While the cylinder serves as the grand space showcasing the book, the square box holds most of the
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Stockholm Library
Interior Hill
A FUNCTIONAL HILL The Hill, which is a unique charateristic of the site, would be intergrated within the design of the building. Pouring into the structure it would serve both as a method of ciculation and a location to sit and enjoy the content of the library. This hill, a symbol of nature, would actually be engineered to provide adequate sitting areas and walking paths that would eventually open into some of the bars and ultimately extend to the exterior “natural” Hill.
TRANSPORTATION HUB
The Sub-level of the library is a library and a train station, served by the city’s metro line. The direct connection between the library and the subway level offers the opportunity to residents to make the library part of their daily commute. This direct connections also opens the possibility to expanding the library through the extention of the metro line.
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Stockholm Library
THE LIBRARY The structural bars support the intercepting tubes, the protruding portions of the tube could be seen cantilevering from the building. The voids between the bars would be glass system allowing for natural light to play in and out of the system. The building opens to the street and to the subway levels. Access to the exterior hill continues directly from the interior hill. The interior tubes also Connect to the hill, continuing the park paths.
THE TUBES The tubes serve as a circulation system reflectant of the pathways on the existing hill and are oriented towards the mayor views of the city. Programmatically undefined, This connector serves as a blender of the subject matters. Though not programmatically determined it is intended that many unplanned gathering would take place, in which the structure expands and contracts determining what is gathering/ corridor spaces. Also in the tubes a assembly hall, the The structure accomodate more formal gatherings. The tubes are structurally supported by the “Bars”.
THE BARS The Bars are determined by the Programmatic needs of the library. The People and Country “bar” is the main entrance to the building. The remaining storefront offer a combination of additional entrances and commercial services, to help financially support the library’s financial needs. Here you have access to the elevators that take you directly from the subway to the tubes. Swimming at the ceiling level are the interwining tubes, connecting the bars.
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Stockholm Library
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Stockholm Library
Latitudinal section
smaller programmatic spaces and the circulation around those spaces. Within the proposed design the elements of the cylinder and the square box are used and transformed. The cylinder is now a means of circulation, the cylinder has been stretched and morphed throughout the different areas of study within the “bars” of library, as well as, enlarged to allow for programmatic spaces such as study areas and auditorium assembly. Ultimately these tubes are a reflection of the city, as they are intending to redirect you view to very specific and historically relevant aspect of the city. Metaphorically it is a response to knowledge, or to furthering of knowledge as it does not neatly organize into subject matter as the “Bars” do, but rather it allows for a free navigation throughout the areas of study, it transcends that which is regulated by the “bars”, to allow for a free interpretation of space, and symbolically knowledge. The tube intercepts and is structurally and metaphorically supported by the concrete “bars”. These bars are arranged by subject matter: Fictional literature, Children’s Literature, Nature and technology, People and Countries, Arts and Foreign Language and Civil Studies. The Bars offers a
more intimate relationship with the written word. Vertical circulation through stairs and escalator will ultimately open into the tube above. The bars are cushioned and connected by a glass structure, also holding programmatic spaces such as study areas, coffee area, additional media, and more flexibles transformable spaces to suit whatever programmatic needs which may arise. The glass structure, allow passerby to still experience the hill, as it is from these areas in which it infiltrates the building. Pouring into the structure and infills the lower level where the new subway station would allow the city direct access to the library. from the opening subway train, commuters will get a glimpse of the extraordinary as they are greeted with a hill at a subway station. The library will extend into the subway station, redefining the way people commute as now they could check out a book which they could return at any subway station in the city. The library will infiltrate the public transportation and become a common part of the commuting process and of the commuters daily life.
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Special Thanks to Jim Williamson and Luben Dimcheff
february
2018