Snøhetta and her Canadian colleagues Dialog won the corresponding international competition at the end of last year, but only now the project is presented to the public. The new building will appear on the border of the city's downtown and East Village, straddling the tracks of the city train, over which a special "casing" is already being erected.
At ground level, the building will feature spacious wood-paneled niches: these new public spaces are designed to resemble the wind-blown chinook clouds of the Calgary province of Alberta.
From these niches, visitors can enter the spacious lobby at the bottom of the atrium with glass ceilings and wood-paneled galleries and walkways. On the 3rd and 4th floors, the usual rooms for reading and individual lessons will be located, and below the program will be more "active". On the façade, the "lively" parts of the building are marked with panels of transparent glass, and the quiet ones - with white fritted glass.
During the competition and further development of the project, the architects learned the wishes and proposals of more than 16,000 citizens.
The library will open in 2018.
