As the architect himself recalls, chance prompted him to participate in this competition. Just at the time of the announcement of the competition, Vladimir Bindeman found himself in Copenhagen and spent almost the whole day in the area where it is planned to build a new library. The opportunity to look at the future construction site with his own eyes and thoroughly imagine what is behind the laconic line of the address in the competition project seemed to the architect an important advantage, and the Architecturium team enthusiastically tackled the creative problem.
The new library is planned to be built in the very heart of the Danish capital, on the Larsens Plads, which is located between the Amalienborg Palace and the Copenhagen Opera. The site allocated for a cultural institution adjoins the front façade of a former warehouse complex, a brutal and laconic structure of dark bricks topped with a gable roof, built at the beginning of the 18th century and converted into an apartment building in the 1970s. Today, part of the site is occupied by a square, part by parking for tourist buses, but its central location, proximity to the new park Amalieheven (in fact, it occupies a neighboring area on the embankment) and direct access to the water prompted the city authorities that it was time to look for a more worthy use for it. And they did not go far for the idea of the function of the new object: modern Copenhagen is famous for its advanced - both intellectually and architecturally - libraries. There are already more than twenty of them in the Danish capital, and for representatives of all generations they serve as "places of power", that is, communication, work, acquaintances, spending time with children and friends, etc. Just how such a communication and information center had to be designed and the library on Larsens Plads: traditional book depositories and places for secluded work with sources of knowledge here side by side with computer rooms, lounges, cafes, lecture halls, children's playrooms and the space of the bookcrossing that is so much in demand today.
Actually, the enumeration of all these functions constituted the semantic backbone of the test task. As for the architectural solution of the future library, it was completely at the mercy of the competition participants. As Vladimir Bindeman recalls, the only requirement for the external appearance of the building, spelled out in the TK, can be considered the desire to make the building an attractive object for tourists and organically integrate it into the facade of the embankment. The only urban planning limitation was the height - the upper elevation of the complex was not supposed to exceed the ridge of the roof of the former warehouse.
“The architectural image of the building, designed, on the one hand, to promote reading, and on the other to serve as a space for modern types of communication, was born in our country almost immediately,” recalls Vladimir Bindeman. "This is a bookshelf that has undergone a transformation in the spirit of Scandinavian design ideas." In fact, the architects came up with a hybrid between a building and a piece of furniture - because what we have in front of us is nothing more than a bookcase, enlarged to the size of a neighboring historic complex. Moreover, the rack is open - such inhabitants of small-sized apartments are very fond of zoning living space: it seems like a real partition separating the conditional office from the living room, but at the same time not a wall that would nullify all the modest insolation. So it is here: the new library extends the front of the embankment, while not continuing the tradition of very material and extremely tangible facades of historical buildings. The "rack" of "Architecturium" is formed by one long shelf, which bends three times at right angles, acquiring a dynamic profile in the form of a double S. It is with this profile that the building is oriented towards the embankment, and the architects draw rectangular brackets of the "shelves" of the first and last floors, while the park, located on the other side, faces the energetic canopy of the central level. An open terrace on this side at ground level and a paired terrace on the upper floor help to better integrate the building into its surroundings: it seems to embrace the adjacent park. The "organic" origin is also emphasized by the material chosen by the architects - it is natural that a bookcase, especially a Scandinavian one, should be made of wood.
The permeability of the shelving is provided by a glass shell, and on the main facade, the architects on each floor make bay windows of different depths and different slopes in relation to the main surface. These are spaces for relaxing with a book, admiring the Copenhagen Opera located directly opposite or having a friendly conversation, but in the context of the story invented by the Architecturium, these elements are clearly read as the spines of books casually placed on the shelves. A street parallel to the embankment is visible in the gaps between them, and so that the library space does not turn into a fully visible aquarium, the authors of the project came up with a snow-white staircase of an emphasized sculptural form that wraps around the central atrium, serving as a reception desk on the ground floor and connecting it with all upper levels … Interestingly, the staircase plan is not repeated on any floor, bringing dramatic spatial intrigue to the multi-colored atrium. If you think about it, this is also very Scandinavian: such stairs, which serve not as axes, but as communication spaces, are very popular in Danish projects of public buildings: how not to recall, for example, the spectacular crosshair of stairs in the Black Diamond library by schmidt hammer lassen or tightly twisted spiral marches at 3XN Erestad College.
In total, the library designed by Architecturium has four levels: one underground and three aboveground. On the -1 floor, the authors removed a media room, a server room, a small book depository, staff quarters and traditional book shelves, supplemented by places for reading. The ground floor level combines the entrance hall, information counter and shop, cafe, security room, toilets and changing rooms for visitors, as well as an open terrace with bookcrossing shelves, benches and plants in tubs. The second floor fulfills the main function of the library - there is a reading room with mezzanines, a lecture area and places for individual and group work - while the upper level is dedicated to a children's area, as well as a terrace on which works of modern art are exhibited. “The fundamental thing in our project is that the library can work through electronic archive management and access to information through an internal server,” explains Vladimir Bindeman. "Access to information is possible from anywhere in the building, and places for work are organized at all levels at separate tables, collective work tables, cafe tables, relax-zones with upholstered furniture."
In the decoration of the interiors of the library premises, the same material was used as on the facades - a wooden lath (in fact, this is the inner surface of the bookshelves), and the main lamp in the atrium is a volumetric installation made up of letters of the Latin alphabet and numbers. Equipped with LED lamps, letters and numbers form a kind of cloud, symbolizing the simultaneous traditional concept of "knowledge" and the new concept of "cloud" as a form of storage and transmission of information. According to the architects' plan, climbing the stairs through the "cloud" will become an interesting attraction for library visitors, and from the street, a scattering of letters and numbers, discernible through the glazing, will unambiguously indicate the purpose of the building for those who pass by. The imagery in this project is thus inextricably linked with functionality - as it should be in a true piece of (for) Scandinavian design.
