Praga, Czech Republic

The National Library Of The Czech Republic

Library as Palace, Factory of Knowledge, Epicentre of learning; the Library as a new urban centre, equidistant from the main academic structures and centralized to refer and ingrate with them, as an area where functions interacts generating new of them.

This complex relation system presents strong analogies with families and vegetable colonies, organized by additions to create self-sufficient unions, functional and systematic, groups of single units that get together interacting, through the form and connotation, creating flows and ways, as a book, a twine where the knowledge runs.

The project considers the building not only from a planimetric point of you, as a self-sufficient, functional and systematic union of the urban green: the Library as a garden of Knowledge.

The urban texture analysis had emphasized different territorial axis through the site: the runway from the centre through the Letná Park until the Metronomo square and then the site, the Milady Horákové Avenue axis and the future City Ring Road axis.

Finally, the diagonal axis from north-east to south-west, connecting Stomovka Park and Castel, which together with all the others generate articulated geometries.

The functional brief programme analysis, has suggested the selection of specific functions as generation of the building. Overlapping the direct and not direct functional interactions, the concentric view of the functional diagram

has been subdivided, characterizing three specific knots, fundamental for the functional organization and their own interactions.

The number and complexity of these connections, structures the new National Library:

- the open Piazza (square), as a urban space and natural continuation of the park system, open area surrounded by the public functions of the building;

- the National Archive, as the heart of the Library, centre, symbol of knowledge and strong representation of the national culture;

- the Consultation Area, structural and supporting element of the library.

The three knots generate together a new system, the runway of the knowledge.

The project proposes the public functions at the top levels, offering to the visitor and client the view of the city and historical centre, and in the sometime, creating a vertical and continuous crossing of the National Archive, moving down to the lower level until the park, as integration with the city.

The integration of the new building with the park happens through the open square at the ground level: a runway, a passage dug-out into the plasticity of the fluidity of the volume.

The public area, general services, consultation areas and reading rooms interact between each others creating a live organism for consumer of knowledge. The National Archive, the beating heart, cultural inheritance of the country, occupies a barycentre position in-between the whole building. Its visible also from the outside, so from the park and from the courtyard, as from inside the building, crossed by the vertical circulation. This organisation creates a slow vertical circulation, through ramp systems, giving the opportunity to discover the library, its spaces and the city.

The location facing the future development of 2040 will make easier any future connection with the new system.

The last two levels of the Library, office again of public functions, as consultations areas, bar, restaurant and panoramic terraces predominate and emphasize the principal axis that runs through the site.

Volumes are opened to the surrounding areas, the internal configuration system is projected to the outside, each floors, corridors and staircases interact between each others creating a global perception where any person can understand the space and the urban landscape as designed for him.

Constantly working, night and day, always updated to provide a continuous and essential service: the knowledge.

The design approach to a compact but plastic and dynamic building, integrated with the surrounding landscape, suggested the research of a cladding system that could be part of it and could offer the opportunity to the building to become part of the park, changing with it through seasons and seasons.

The texture chosen has been defined from the main natural element from which a tree develops: the roots. As analogy of life, roots grow up generating a complex nervation system from bottom to top.

Growing to the sky, this texture can prune giving space to a clean surface, covered by grass: the open space at the top. The concrete realisation of this texture designs each elevation creating strong characterisation in the contest. These elements will provide openings at the lower levels and more closed area moving up to the top. On the north side, most of the cladding will be closed to avoid any energetic dispersion creating a stronger vision of this complex system till the top.

The ordered sequence of spaces, lighted open rooms, and the gradual diffusion of light generate a building in continuous evolving.

The concrete used for the façade texture is made with pigments sensitive to changing temperatures as to sunlight supply. Its colour varies during the daytime and the changing seasons of the year providing a better environmental integration to the natural background.

Europaconcorsi Beta

The National Library Of The Czech Republic