The contemporary city is whirled with potential energy and tangible and intangible fluxes. Composed as states of natural and artificial, these fluxes lie between the soil and the sky, within which lie the intangibles spheres of knowledge and the exhilarating pulses of the city.
A city seeking a foundation of learning and knowledge in its social sphere invests in community life and its people as the human capital, tapping this inherent potential as an opportunity to put forward the path of change. The city with such aspirations focuses on an invisible separation that lies between the realm of architecture and the public domain. It is here where learning cultivates. An architecture that celebrates communal and collective values. A ‘container’ where urban functions collide with fluxes of nature generating an ‘intelligent’ space acting as incubator for thinking individuals. Such spaces are institutions of which only libraries are now the last vestige of interiorized public space of the city. The evolution of the library inclined more to the public space of appearance ensures its dependence on the changes in socio-environmental conditions. An evolution reflecting change and an ever seeking pursuit for the eternal utopia. A public space not enforced but that encourages participation. With a precedence to natural setting as an important criteria in Korean architecture, the idea of a library gains permanence by its urbanistic dimension to innovate and introduce a new form in the permanent landscape of the city. The integration with this setting is the READING BETWEEN LINES.
These lines are stratified layers that trigger a metamorphosis through a discontinuous continuity in the contemporary city. These layers coexist simultaneously reshuffling, interweaving, overlapping and sometimes interrupting through an architectural device capable of generating an image in which the soil rises to the mountain and the sky dips to the soil. The stratification opportunes a new way of designing and living a space amidst a nexus of complex system of connections, exchanges, that are porous and flexible. The interiorized space, thanks to the reading of the layers, results as a profound volume charged with active flows and intertwined movements that exude dynamism and plurality. A complexity resulting into different intricate spatial connections capable of generating favorable conditions and cultivating a culture of accessible knowledge and information dissemination.
In a context of irreversible transformation of the contemporary city acting as a background, the only distinctive and defined feature of the city is the memory. The library holds the responsibility to create a memory, an image to instill a sense of belonging for its city dwellers to invigorate a new trend. A trends that cultivates thinkers, a trend based on exchange and access, a space that cultivates participation, a space that addresses the opportunity to prosper, a space that develops creativity. A public ‘room’ bounded with knowledge, a meeting place where the ground acts as an activity initiator . The ‘reading’ of the existing topography, the urban morphology suggest the methodology of a space well inserted in the city block between their traces, their lines operating ideally as a transversal section of the urban fabric, a structural line which governs the rule of the spatial configuration. The project proposal interprets the meaning of the open space "public" as a "forum" that represents a theatrical machine available to accommodate different urban functions that redefine a great "inside" of the city and its possibility of an exponential growth.
Status: Competition Entry
Location: Daegu, KR
My Role: team architect