Text description provided by the architects. The Casa de las Ideas digital library is located along the canal that runs through the Tijuana Camino Verde neighborhood. The adjacent buildings, mostly residences and businesses built informally, face the same channel, where a large amount of public activity, transport, and both formal and informal business, is concentrated. Two challenges characterize this area: crime and flooding.
The library is part of the urban development plan, an initiative of SEDESOL, which provides not only the channeling of the river, but the integration of a number of public spaces, parks, recreational areas, community center and library. The aim is to improve the quality of life of its residents and combat crime through the design of civic infrastructure and program spaces.
The proposed library is a space of just 220 square meters. The spatial challenge and questioning about how a digital library can contribute to the city, have generated a new typology for the library: a collective space where learning and interaction of information goes beyond the simple accessibility of these services.
Its architecture opens to a number of scenarios both inside and outside. The shape of the building provides an internal multipurpose room on different platforms for lectures, plays, workshops, reading spaces and computer access.
The slope generated by a different levels articulates a void on the outside at the back of the building, where an outdoor forum proposed. A sequential cascade of spaces makes the smooth and tight building fully open to the public even when outside business hours. The primary intention is to create and contribute to the city through the form of architecture that creates an initiative of civic life in its adjacent spaces.
