-
Architects: LRO GmbH & Co. KG Freie Architekten BDA
- Area: 20300 m²
- Year: 2020
-
Photographs:Brigida González
-
Manufacturers: Feco, Ries Akustik, Schwarzwald-Elemente
Text description provided by the architects. The Württemberg State Library building in Stuttgart is one of southern Germany’s preeminent architectural achievements of the 1960s. The building is impressive due to its generous sequence of spaces as well as the thoughtful choice of materials and the high quality of its architectural implementation.
The annex building now directly fills the corner of Ulrichstraße and Konrad-Adenauer-Straße. The pavement for pedestrians, which begins with the tree-lined avenue at the Staatsgalerie and currently ends at Ulrichstraße, will be extended to the State Archives building and hopefully continued to Charlottenplatz at a later point in time.
The new building, which roughly adopts the ridge height of the Wilhelmspalais, is set apart from the original building to provide space for a path between the two buildings that enables a link from Urbanstraße to the lower level of the building complex. Urbanistically, the cubic volume of the old reading room, which now occupies the middle of the new plaza, forms a relationship vis-à-vis the central projection of the palace across the street. Ample steps establish a connection to the new pavement at street level.
The building can now be accessed at both levels. The lower level will also house the future cafeteria, which opens onto the street and can operate independently of the library. The main entrance to the library is on the level above. From there, library-goers reach the lobby with the requisite information counters, entry points to the controlled access zone, the book return, and a hall and exhibition area that opens out to Konrad-Adenauer-Straße. There, some of the spaces are two stories high, because for economic reasons the ceiling heights of the typical stories are considerably lower.
On the first floor, which is accessible via a staircase within the controlled access zone, the connection to the old building is situated directly at the top of the stair. The central part of the floor is occupied by shelves. Along the length of the building on both sides, open workstations are lined up in rows towards the hall, with supplemental administrative rooms opposite them. An atrium visually connects this level to the other three floors above. On the second and third floors, the reading desks are located along the zigzag exterior walls. The top floor is, by contrast, laid out in reverse: here the reading desks are placed in the middle – because on this level, the folded roof structure enables us to direct daylight into the center of the building.
At first glance, the new building has the appearance of an independent entity. The fact that it constitutes an annex to the old building is made clear by the choice of materials, dominated by exposed concrete cast with board formwork, creating echoes of the old in the new building.
