Schmidt hammer lassen architects won an international architectural competition in 2006, beating competitors such as PagePark Architects, MJP Architects, Moshe Safdie and Allan Murray Architects, O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects and Bennetts Associates.
For another two years, the bureau finalized the project and coordinated it with the university leadership and the Aberdeen administration, and in 2009, construction finally began, which took a little more than two years and 57 million pounds.
The University of Aberdeen, founded in 1495, is one of the most famous educational institutions in Great Britain. Today, it consists of three colleges - arts and social sciences, physical sciences, and natural sciences and medicine - each of which is divided into a number of schools and research institutes located in their own buildings. For the construction of the library, a site was allocated on the border between the campus and the city, and the competition task stipulated that the new complex would not only organically complement the historical buildings, but also organize additional public space on the campus.
Having designed a pedestrian square in front of the library, already named Academic, schmidt hammer lassen architects provided their ultra-modern building with the "air" necessary for its perception, that is, a distance from the building of the 16-18 centuries.
The first floor of the library, which houses a cafe, an exhibition hall and a conference center, is completely transparent and actually becomes a continuation of the mentioned area. Through the central hall of the building you can walk through, and this space is perceived rather as a lively covered passage, accessible not only to students and teachers, but also to all citizens. As the architects themselves explain, they sought in this way to rid the new complex of the boring stereotype that libraries are a very dull place in which silence eternally reigns.
The entire internal structure of the building completely contradicts this boring image - its central atrium is designed as a giant funnel, gradually expanding upward. A similar effect is created by deliberately curvilinear "cutouts" on each of the floors - they all have the shape of a triangle with smooth corners, however, they are slightly turned relative to each other, thanks to which the atrium space acquires truly mesmerizing dynamism and plasticity, which the architects skillfully oppose to the laconic and uncompromising geometry of the form itself. building.
Outwardly, the library, as already mentioned, is an ideal cube. Its edges (with the exception of the roof, on which the solar panels are located) are faced with glass, on which a pattern is applied in the form of uneven silver stripes. For this unusual facade solution, the building has already been nicknamed "zebra", but in fact the authors who came up with such an expressive architectural image were inspired not by the striped cloven-hoofed animal, but by the palette of Aberdeen himself, which is also often called the "Silver City". Even in the most cloudy weather, the new library looks very elegant and bright, becoming a noticeable accent in the panorama of the old university city.
