In designing a large new university library, various references come to the fore. Famous libraries, ranging from the old Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (1875) by Henri Labrouste to the Stockholm Municipal Library (1927) by Erik Gunnar Asplund, have called for an advanced contemporary building.
Today such a building must be a gateway to the digital highway but must also refer to important traditions, including access to knowledge and the rarefied atmosphere of study within a splendid environment. In the case of Delft, with a thousand workstations and facilities to accommodate three thousand students each day, the building must also be the heart of the university and provide a landmark within a campus the size of a small town.
The design must also consider its relationship with the centrally placed auditorium, the brutalist building by Van den Broek and Bakema, great names in the history of the university and Dutch architecture. Through contrast, a symbiosis has been established – the towering concrete of the auditorium and the landscape in which the library is sited form a new unity.
Status: Built
Location: Delft, NL
Additional Credits: programme
15,000 m2 university library with underground book archive, reading rooms, university publisher, offices, Trésor for historic books and exhibitions, study spaces, book binder and bookshop
client
ING Real Estate
project address
Prometheusplein 1, Delft, Netherlands
design
1993 -1995
realization
1996 -1997
awards
2000, Award for the Millennium
Corus Construction
1998, National Steel Construction Prize
Dutch Steel Building Institute
