OFFICE 28

The project for a new Stockholm city library is a contemporary inverse of the adjacent Gunnar Asplund building. Both are positioned at a slight angle to the city grid, and their geometry is correlated, as the new building takes the form of a circle circumscribed around the existing library, while the void at its centre squares the circle of Asplund’s rotunda. A ramp descending to this sunken patio provides the main access to the whole library complex. Equivalent to Asplund’s round hall, the open public square is the focal point of the new building, with reading rooms and book stacks exposed through its mirroring glass facade. Each floor is organised as a centripetal plan, with shelves and desks arranged radially around the empty patio core and framed by a ring of auxiliary rooms, toilets, elevators, stairs and ramps. Parallel to the inner library circulation, an outer spiral ramp is carved out of the windowless facade. This pedestrian promenade ascends from street level to the top of the Observatory Hill park behind the building, offering glimpses of both the interior and the cityscape. The ramp maintains an ambiguous notion of the transparency of a public building, by contrasting its introversion with the utmost degree of exposure.