Located in the center of the US capital, the institution plays a key role in the city's library network, which is now being actively updated: for example, Archi.ru wrote about two new libraries built in Washington according to a project by David Adjaye. The existing buildings are also being adapted to the requirements of the 21st century librarianship. In this case, officials and architects are often faced with a two-part problem: it is necessary to fit into the structure, for this purpose, not intended, not only various new functions, but also the commercial elements of the program, at the expense of which it is planned to pay for the modernization.
It was these tasks that were set before the finalists of the competition by the leadership of the Memorial Library. Martin Luther King: its building, completed in 1972 - three years after the death of the architect, did not contain part of the entertainment, but part of the new media functions, without which the "library of the XXI century" can no longer be imagined. The city has allocated $ 103 million for reconstruction, but this amount will be only half or even less of the final cost of the project.
Therefore, the customers ordered the contestants two versions of the project: one - exclusively modernization of the internal space of the library (total area - 23,225 m2), the second - adding a three-story superstructure to the laconic volume of its building (the design allows it) - office or even residential.
The competition was won by the Dutch bureau Mecanoo, which recently built Europe's largest library in Birmingham (which received mixed reviews, however). The head of this workshop, Francine Huben, proposes to remove all brick walls from the interior, replacing them with glass ones, and to solve the main problem - poor communication between floors - add glass elevators and escalators. She sees the superstructure in the form of an obliquely placed "bar" on top.
A green reconstruction of the building is also envisaged. However, the competition project is only the first stage of the reconstruction plan. Now Mecanoo Architects and their local partners Martinez and Johnson Architecture will work with librarians and readers to finalize their proposal.
Also the finalists were Canadians Patkau Architects with the American bureau Ayers Saint Gross: along with the inevitable escalators, they came up with a "cloud" with a lounge and media center on the upper tiers of the building.
They hid the superstructure behind a high screen that runs along the perimeter of the roof of the original building.
The third team, the Americans Studios Architecture and the Freelon Group, proposed to radically change the lobby by introducing a grand staircase; they also added a huge auditorium and a garden with "tribunes" on the roof, and the superstructure was made as a noticeable golden volume.
Observers note that none of the teams was able to convincingly connect the old and the new part of the building, especially since the principles of the Venice Charter, according to which modern additions should differ markedly from the original "skeleton", turned out to be poorly applicable to Misa. The ideal shape of his building does not fit well with any annexes, so it would be more natural (but not necessarily ethical) to build on the building with tiers identical to the main ones - especially since the modular basis of Mies van der Rohe's project allows it.
However, the most active critics of the project are worried about the commercial component, and not because of the integrity of the appearance of the monument of modernism: in their opinion, the city can afford to pay for the project in full and thereby preserve the full public purpose of the building. Whether this story develops into something similar to the battles over the renovation of the New York Public Library by Norman Foster - time will tell.
