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1 KM LIBRARY
Annapaola Busnardo, Marco Ferrari, Matteo Ghidoni, Fabio Gigone, Giulia Marabini, Michele Marchetti, Luca Racchini

Entering the city stereotype as if it was one of its infinite spaces, this is a introverted and extroverted golden building, both in continuity with the outside and self-referential, just like the writer and the reader.
The project is conceived as a continuous space designed through different strategies:

› as an extension to the adjacent park;

› as a volume that emerges as a strip from the city, progressively raising from the ground;

› as an underground set of archiving slots turning upwards into a platform, representing an abstract urban pattern, the Basament;

› as a networked structure of storage areas and offices interrelated and organized to connect all the different parts of the library, the Platform;

› as a spiralling ribbon rising in continuity from structure below , the 1 km Street.

Structured as a tree-like diagram, the building covers the whole area and rises from the ground growing from a three storey underground basement, which contains the main book storages; continues as a platform raising from the ground level where the ‘Writers Hall’, a double-height entrance, the National Archival Collection, the Parliament Library and and all NLCR Departments are located; it continues on a top square and moves along a spiralling panoramic street unfolding up in different directions, displaying all public offices, the open stacks, the reading and studying rooms.

The Platform is conceived as an abstract platform, a sort of hard disk containing the living storage and management of the memories and ‘the help of others’, of which it must be possible to get the intuitive pattern of shapes and volumes. The main part of the Platform and the Basement are divided into ‘slots’, shaping the different storage areas for all books, all the organizational structure of the library collections and the offices, intertwined and integrated together. The slot structure is conceived in order to have the possibility to be furtherly extended and re-organized for any future development and extension of the Library after 2030, also making possible the rearrangement of the existing slots.

The 1km Street is a spatial device with an ever changing light, aspect, and sights. The path moves through a sequence of patios dedicated to the main Czech writers from the 20th century. The reading areas are hierarchically positioned at the end of the spiral, becoming gradually more and more distinctive and quiet.
A strict grid of stairs, elevators and freight elevators provides for the library’s vertical connections.

[thanks to Attu Studio for the kind support]