The new National Library of the Czech Republic will be built in Letna Park, one of the largest and most famous green oases in Prague. And if from the urban planning point of view, the participants of the competition received a full carte blanche, then the technical task was distinguished by increased complexity - the complex with an area of about 6 thousand square meters had to accommodate not only all books ever published in the Czech Republic (in paper or electronic form), but and numerous reading and conference rooms, lecture halls, a museum. In addition, a prerequisite was the possibility of expanding the building after 2040 by at least a third.
In their reasoning, the architects proceeded from the fact that a book is a kind of code, access to which only those who have certain knowledge can access. "The availability of everything and everyone in our time leads to the devaluation of information," the authors explain, "and such a natural code as the text of a book becomes a kind of barrier that must be overcome in order to extract a message." At the same time, codes, as you know, can be simpler, they can be more complicated, and it can take a lifetime to get to the most secret of them … It is on this - the access system of different levels - that the image of the library is built.
The site has a fairly strong relief, so the architects proposed to place the complex on a platform buried in the ground at different heights. So, one corner of it is almost completely dug into the soil, and the opposite northeastern side, on the contrary, is raised above the surface. It turns out that the library was supposed to balance on a slope, and the platform had to play the role of a bypass platform, uniting buildings of different purpose into a single whole.
The core of the projected structure was supposed to be the main repository of the national archive, which houses the genuine treasures of the Czech book fund. Taking into account the social significance of these publications, the architects sought to find a golden mean in the appearance of the repository - to make it both a reliable safe for rarities and a spectacular monument to the centuries-old book culture of the republic. As the authors themselves say, it is designed as a "vertical storage system for contours." Only this is not a single block, but a kind of "pile-up" structure - in other words, the sections of the book depository are likened to tall piles of books of various sizes. Visitors can approach this shrine only by crossing the atrium gorge along one of the narrow bridges - the block is hidden by a wall-screen made of very thick tinted glass, in which the names of all volumes stored here are cut by a laser. So it turns out that the architects literally wrapped one metaphor in the volume (stacks of books) with another (catalog), using the names of books in all sorts of languages to create a very effective and, most importantly, exactly the ornament corresponding to the place. Above, the black cube was supposed to be covered with a translucent dome, and between it and the storehouse itself, an atrium was to be placed, in which the maximum number of reading rooms, lobbies and public areas were open. The museum of the National Library of the Czech Republic was also designed there.
In a similar way - in the form of casually stacked piles of books - all the other buildings of the complex, grouped around the main storehouse, were decided by the architect. True, here everything is much more democratic: these "volumes" can be walked on, shifted relative to each other, they form an ingenious system of terraces, verandas and courtyards. As conceived by the authors, such a structure emphasizes, on the one hand, the impressive scale of the collected fund, and on the other hand, the heterogeneity of the stored and the possibility of access to it. And if the central block is a secret "black box", the true content of which is only partly revealed by the inscriptions on its walls, then all other volumes available to any visitor are painted in welcoming white. And since not only reading rooms are located here, but also numerous accompanying functions, it would not be very honest to decorate the facades with words or, say, quotes from the works of the classics. And the architects found another symbol for the storage and transfer of knowledge, ideally suited to the role of an abstract, non-binding ornament - white facades are likened to punched cards. The role of "slots" is performed by vertical and horizontal inserts of the same tinted glass. But the fact that the message is encrypted in the picturesque alternation of white and dark surfaces, Totement / Paper is cunningly silent.
