Where the Book Things Are | 광주 대표도서관

Gwangju City Main Library International Competition

Gwangju-si, Korea

Design Period : Dec. 2019 - Feb. 2020

Architect : Simplex Architecture + STUDIO KYSH—

Landscape Architect : Uraban Yards

Project Team : Chung Whan Park, Sanghun Song, Kyu Young Huh, Seungho Park, Yu Kyung Kim, Eun Seon Jung, Hyun Woo Lee, Dahoon Jung, Jihee Bang, Seong Wook Jeong

Located at the northern tip of the Sangmu Cultural Park Zone of the new downtown area in Gwangju, the Sangmu incinerator site became a new possibility for a civic cultural facility since its last operation in 2016. In the new central location as the city’s main library, Gwangju City Main Library will be a connector of culture and nature, people and knowledge. New media technologies change the way we consume knowledge. While new there are numerous new ways to convey knowledge and information, traditional form of books is also challenged. Being liberated from its physical limitation of text on paper, now a book can be ubiquitous without its physical presence. In the library of future, books will carry more symbolic and experiential meaning than the mere information they contain. Widely dispersed in the natural setting of the park, the new library’s bookstacks hold symbolic meaning of books and celebrated library experience, as well as its physical content, books.

FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE

Books are a symbol of knowledge. The library bookstacks are Positioned centrally in the large site, 4 tall volumes of bookstacks are the most accessible part of the library. With the Gwangju stream in the North and Energe Park in the South, the field of bookstacks opens up the space that was once blocked by the incinerator facilities. These transparent yet structural bookstack volumes are the ‘columns’ that structurally support other programmatic volumes high above the ground.

BOOK OF PROMENADE

The vertical bookstacks serve as the main access point to the library spaces. While the house for books turn into the most publicly accessible part of the library, the experience of entering through the vertical promened of cascading books has a powerful and symbolic meaning as Gwangju’s main public library. Bookstacks are not merely a place to store books, but serve as a vehicle to increase exposure of Gwangju’s rich culture.

PARK OF READING

Knowledge in new media and books beyond the text liberate the traditional form of a reading room. Rather than being confined to a single rigid reading space, reading activities will be ubiquitous, dispersed throughout the entire building. A loop of informal reading spaces connect the education, sports, office and reading programs together while the floating volume becomes a ‘park for reading’. In addition, the green roof of the floating volume expands the ‘reading park’ outdoors to the floating landscape amid the park.