Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm Public Library

ateliermob

photos/images credits: ateliermob

eco +

photos/images credits: ateliermob

The extension of the Public Library of Stockholm, originally designed by Gunnar Asplund, provides a good moment for reflection about contemporary methods for designing urbanity. The area of intervention is in between a strong design building (Asplunds) and a natural hill (Observatory Hill).

photos/images credits: ateliermob

eco+ embraces this two realities into an urban ecosystem. Buildings, roads and other systems for transportation and people, constitutes the determinant tool for constructing urbanity. In our opinion constructing urbanity in the 21st Century, must have something to do with carving ecosystems into complex urban contexts. In this sense the submitted project, tries to achieve a compromise

between Asplunds Librarys designed form and the hill that is above. Suggesting a very 80s post-modern attitude, in this specific case, we decided to use design as a tool to create the ecosystem.

photos/images credits: ateliermob

Embedding forms and attitudes of the existing building, it was created a continuous plateau where two cylinders (same diameter as Asplunds) emerge. The lower one, with one floor, is totally independent and relates itself with the exterior public spaces, providing a referential spot for who comes from Hagagatans Street. The tower cylinder assumes itself as the new most important place for books. This building, although it can be seen from far (it will be the only part of the library that will be seen from the exit of the metro station) is recoiled to permit library users and people that walk by, an open view of Asplunds building, restaurant cylinder and ways to the hill. The skin for the new cylinders is a system of either transparency or reflection, so that it can be mutable according to the different seasons natural variables that occur in the hill.

photos/images credits: ateliermob

The exterior plateau is a place for communication. Creating this plateau, acceded from the road throughout staircase or the south side-walk, provides a layer that makes the transition from the street to the natural environment of the hill. The plateau, at its end, melts with the hill becoming a part of the circulations.

For the library park and pond it seams that the original plan feats perfectly well with the general idea for the new project. However we do think that it should have a small equipment for supporting the activities that occur in

the library park and hill.

Europaconcorsi Beta

Stockholm Public Library