public library extension - Stockholm

30.000m²

Dislocations in space

fueled by fantasy are contained in books. As a spatial motor, programmatic dislocations are realized in the wings of the Asplund tract to create interfaces to dimensions outside the realm of the library. The Swedish Institute of Children's Books in the South wing allows for a formal administrative process on the piano nobile while opening to children below on the entrance level. The West wing receives a gastronomic unit, which uses the detached character of the Asplund tract as a reclusive space in proximity to the books and media presented in the rotunda, in which the media can be consumed in conjuncture with the monastic and meditative culinary experience. At festive occasions the unit caters the fundraisers and the selected guests. The base of the rotunda is conceived as a media workshop with a multi media cave, a virtual space of all-round projections able to materialize virtually generated spaces at the center, the library floats on a stratum of a highly experimental medium of dislocation.

Four ways to climb a mountain

reinvent the Observatoriekullen. The building is an inserted path system linking the serpentines of the Observatoriekullen and the Subterranean station of Odenplan. New ways of ascending a mountain introduce the library as a landscape promenade to traverse: ramps, escalators, elevators extend the existing serpentines and introduce previously excluded habitat to the experience of the mountain. The Observatoriekullen is made accessible for disabled people and other classes of population dependant on wheels, as toddlers. The library becomes landscape. (growth: 4 seasons)

The library as a city

is accessible without restraints and becomes a part of the city. Buildings have entrances, cities have streets. The site of the extension is situated between Odenplan metrostation, Gustav Vasa church, Observatoriekullen and the Asplund library. The installment of the library is the opportunity to establish a formal link between two inherent ideologies: the modern subterranean traffic allowing for the rapid exchange and intensification of knowledge and information, and the classical idea of observation and contemplation represented by the Observatoriekullen. The role of the modern library is the integration of these diverse notions of mythology, information and knowledge. The extension mediates between the pastoral Hill of Observations (level 5), the City of History (Level 0) and the Tunnels of Exchange (level -1) by providing access on these strata. (growth: 5 planning years )

The open library

is a piece of open urban infrastructure. As a walk through experience, the library extends from the underground metro system to the Obseravtoriekullen. The program of the library is amended with a series of lobbies that form a sequence of public spaces on this new path through the building, allowing for an informal experience of knowledge. The entrance lobby open to Odengatan holds extended seating furniture to act as an urban lounge and hold the dock spaces of the visitor oriented activities. To it linked is the circulation lobby, equipped with terminals, stretching between the open collection and Gyldengatan. The sequence continues by ascending to the picnic attic on level 5 that opens to Observatoriekullen .

The library as a forum

extends the library as a source. Reading is extended by writing. Writing becomes programming. (The Library is not anymore a place of reading: to receive and to accept knowledge, but a place for critique, information, questions and in last consequence a place to write. Its role has evolved from being the monopolist place for dissemination of knowledge to being a center for critique and discussion in the city. The intense availability of knowledge and information from a multitude of sources is paralleled with means to write back into the collective pool of civilization. The role of the library is to inspire the individual to obtain knowledge and to provide spaces and channels that invite the citizen to express and exchange his personal knowledge base with others, a place to write. (reformation 1: 1 decade)

Writing the library

by the public, the library as an open collection receives a new dimension. A condenser of individual writings: ephemeral opinions, prose, verse, manifestoes drive the ever refiguring content of the library and enrich its collection by public contribution. Program of the library is to accommodate new media reacting to the dynamic properties of those. Exigencies are set by exchangeability.

Inexactness of language

results in ever ephemeral categories up for revision. Things are not either or, but more or less: categories overlap and are manifold in each example. Books and media adhere to multiple keywords. The layout of the library extension becomes a spatial diagram of this plurality and explores the intersections of categories. An internal city of overlapping intersecting districts results from the un-sharp organization of language and residual shifts in lexical categories and library systems.

Local order

is defined by a spatial information system that locates key concepts of literature in the volume of the library. Traditionally, books are arranged in a rectilinear matrix fashion based on the predominance of an alpha-numeric order system. Information technology allow for a departure from these formal systems and to arrange our shelves according to substantial categories. Departure from exclusive either-or distinctions to the fuzzy logic of inclusive one-and-the-other defines our cosmology. The space of the library is a field extended beyond its premises on which qualities are punctuated. Shelves as linear elements mediate between these points and define the location of a book due to its probable adherence to these categories. image: iron dust in a magnetic field. (Reformation 2: 5 prepared years)

Shelves

are the native elements defining the spaces of a library. Two distinguished layouts are provided: The memory of the formal library based on a rectilinear logic is juxtaposed an informal and ludic sector organized to point to key categories laid out on the local order of the library. The loose configuration allows for the emergence of zones of particular characteristics. Children are the primary inhabitants of these zones; fantasy is the material of construction. Yet a residual inhabitation of the dis-respective sectors is allowed for.