The Daegu Gosan Public Library Competition Entry by Eduardo Lopez arises from two considerations; in the first place, understanding the importance of the facade as a foreground and background to the library site and secondly, taking up the radical change to the direct link between the ‘green belt’ and the surrounding area. To resolve this, the architects attempt to merge the library volume with the buildings next to it and create a movement in the facade, where the trees of the ‘green belt’ carve the facade vertically, creating a sense of dynamism. More images and architects’ description after the break.
What is the inside of a book like? One possible approach to the public library is to imagine the inside of a book: that conceptual space defined by its edges, in which diverse planes or pages are intertwined; a recipient that can create an interior world with a life of its own, where light enters like the interior of a vase. A place in which each person is a letter, similar and different from the others, acquires sense and meaning. In which the spaces are like the pages, similar in form, but different in content, intertwined, like a book, constantly revealing the next one.
A book seen from within is almost a cubist book, where forms are unmade only to be remade later. Where spaces opens outwards and also inwards. Where the boundaries between interior and exterior disappear to form part of the city. Where plans unfold. So similarity and different, order and flexibility, variations and restrictions all become an abstract approach to the world of culture, but also to the material, concrete world of architecture, identifying themselves. One of the most powerful aspects is that the building confirms to all existing trees, without demolishing any existing green area, adapting to the geometry that is between those green masses.
One of the main ideas of the project is to create lighting courtyards inside the project. These light wells are oriented according to the inclinations and altitudes more unfavorable with the winter solstice, with the aim of introducing the lighting in the most unfavorable days. These lighting courtyards are open and intersect each other creating voids. They are also organizing elements of the stations in both plan and section, reflecting themselves in the facade.
The thermal operation, based on the idea of creating a ‘microclimatic envelope’ – in this case a translucent or transparent wrapper which houses the internal blocks of the brief – provide a semi-public space with exceptional climatic conditions in the sheltered landscape between these two skins, where one can spend more time ‘outside’ by providing an internal exterior.
The union between the energy/climatic sustainability purposes and the functional proposal (by means of an independent, primary circulation of people and air along the variable space between the building’s two outer wall spaces) allows the interior to be broken up and opened onto a chamber that nuances the relationship between the interior and exterior spaces. Winter energy is generated in this pocket, while in the summer, the temperature differences ventilate the building independently using the air that flows in from the north chamber and the voids in the roof.
