Stockholm City Library
Competition entry 2006
A Busy Bazaar
A place to chat, watch, meet and argue. Like the Athenian Stoa at the root of humanist culture, and the original marketplace of ideas - a humble Type, easy going and accessible, and a background foil to the temple.
A Set of Rooms
Inviting inhabitation by their spatial variety and richness. A long wide colonnaded bazaar allowing big events or just a break from study, lined with pocket rooms providing for intimacy or experiment. An enfilade of rooms grading from quiet to bustling is set back from the bazaar, with secluded balcony rooms above. Visit activities and teaching are across a court from the café, spilling out together or into the allee created between the old and new libraries. From this bustling ground floor up to a calmer working environment, and then into a tower of tall library rooms, culminating in a loggia looking back over the ridge. Flexible and easy to change – which will keep the interior dense and fresh and relevant. In place of circulation, subject and public areas share generous rooms, promoting fertile overlap and increasing the spatial efficiency – what needs space at that moment takes it and uses it. Some of the rooms are garden courts; some meditative and some playful. The long gallery on the first floor spills out to walled gardens, open to creative inhabitation