schmidt hammer lassen architects has been announced as the winners of a competition to design a large new central library in Ningbo, one of China's oldest cities with a population of seven million. The building will house the library's significant collection of over two million historic and ancient books, and will aim to double the library's daily visitors to around 8000 per day. Situated on the edge of a new ecological wetland area, the proposal will also form a new cultural hub within the city. As the latest in schmidt hammer lassen's long list of libraries (including the Royal Library in Copenhagen) with eight completed and four currently under construction, Ningbo's will be the practice's first in China.
