Library for Qujing Culture Center / Hordor Design Group + Atelier Alter

Courtesy of Atelier Alter

Architects: Hordor Design Group, Atelier Alter
Location: Qujing, Yunnan, China
Architect In Charge: Yan Huang
Area: 18800.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Courtesy of Atelier Alter

Design Architect: Xiaojun Bu, Yingfan Zhang
Project Architect: Haipeng Guo, Langtian Weng
Design Team: Haipeng Guo, Langtian Weng, Zhenqing Que, Ling Zeng, Jeff Ding
Civil/Structure/Mep Engineer: Shuchuan Zhang, Guangyu Zhang, Xiaonan Zhu, Yongfeng Fan
General Contractor: Qujing Dafeng Construction Engineering Group Co. Ltd.
Cost: $13,419,997

From the architect. According to Aldo Rossi, every city needs a study room. A library is the study room for a city. Michelangelo’s Laurentian library brings up the question: is the library the interior or exterior of a city?

Woman and man, rich or poor are all welcome to the library. It is a socially inclusive heterotopias space in modern cities. In a way, a “library” is the “house” for the collectives. Library is a place for thoughts. As it concerns with the classification of knowledge, library is also a critical program to a civilization.

We attempt to reinvent the program of library by breaking down the separation between reading and storage areas. By having the two spaces intertwined, an abstract field of knowledge is formed, one could easily move from the perception space to the projection space.

There is a direct connection between the pattern of circulation and the trajectory of one’s thought about knowledge. The act of circulation becomes an act of creation. Cross-connections between different knowledge are spontaneous, and inter-disciplinary studies are encouraged. Critical thoughts are latent in this matrix of knowledge.

We base our formal transformation on the architectonic of a “vertical folded-plate.”As we designate the solids to be the structure and storage, the voids in-between are collective space for reading and gatherings.