Museums and Libraries: The Latest Architecture and News

The “’Open Exchang’ proposal, for the Green Square Library and Plaza competition, creates a space of public engagement by challenging the role of the library in the contemporary city of Sydney. Designed by MODU , in collaboration with Future Green Studio landscape architects, their project becomes a social and public space made possible by new technology, with the potential to transcend the traditional definition of learning spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by CVDB Arquitectos, with Tiago Filipe Santos, the proposal for the Refurbishment of the Old Railway Station of Mora, Portugal is focused in the pragmatic definition of uses. These aim to bring to life the existing buildings, activate their use, clarify the functional and distributive relations between spaces, and promote new built areas that incorporate a contemporary presence through the iconographic approach of the facades.More images and architects’ description after the break.

In terms of both the cityscape and its symbolic significance, the proposal by WEAVA Architects + SWAN Architectes for the Helsinki Central Library will represent a modern and dynamic image of an urban public facility for the citizens of the city. Their ONYX concept forms seamlessly into the planned draft proposal of the Töölönlahti area, responding to the surrounding buildings, infrastructure and urban fabric. It is an iconic cultural landmark in its own right, but also respectful of its place as part of a greater master plan. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In the virtualized information era, Plan 01 believes the design for the Helsinki Central Library should be more than ever a “physical space”. The project should be a place for sensory experience, a place where culture becomes an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas, a place where the civil forum is recovered from the virtual and returned to the urban world. Their concept becomes a symbol in stone and wood that opens its heart to the city and offers visitors a retreat for body and mind. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Helsinki Central Library, designed by FIRM a.d. and OKB Architecture, is a hub of knowledge, where different people, communities and constituencies can come together. With their concept of ‘Geologies of Information’, their design expresses how if libraries were like sedimentary rocks, where layers of knowledge accumulated over time, libraries of the 21st century are like igneous rock in which different mediums of knowledge and learning are fused into a granular heterogeneous whole. More images and architects’ description after the break.