A joint project between the City of Half Moon Bay and the County of San Mateo, the design of the new Half Moon Bay Library honors the region’s agricultural roots and coastal environment while providing a valuable community resource to serve the 270-square-mile area. The challenge was how to satisfy the needs of the growing coastal region (in addition to Half Moon Bay, the library serves 10 other unincorporated communities along the coast, from Montara to Pescadero), while preserving the modest architecture character of Half Moon Bay. The resulting $18.2 million, 22,000-square-foot building strikes a balance a facility large and flexible enough to meet the region’s current and future needs, yet one that responds directly to its physical context and community.
Since 1895, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has empowered people to learn and grow by providing access to information in free, open, and inclusive environments. But in Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood, a neglected and foreboding physical structure was impeding community access to library services.
The project is a cafeteria and co-working space which is designed for Middle East Technical University within the large campus area in Ankara, Turkey. The purpose is to create a high-quality platform for the possibility of interaction, collective and collaborative working amongst the students and academicians. Given that the site location of the project is in close proximity to the research development areas of the university, the building is imagined to become an incubator and support the activities of researchers. By working for 24 hours, the co-working space offers a different ground for the campus rather than another institution. The primary design issues stem from the wish to integrate nature into architecture through passive and active systems and variety of architectural elements.
Gathering is the beginning of all civilized behaviors, and people’s gathering leads to the emergence of food, history and emotions. In Fuzhou, known as the “Rongcheng”, people used to gathering under trees and talking about various things and a village culture emerged along with nature. All contains deep emotions showing that it is difficult for urban life to take root. WATERFROM DESIGN responsible for Fuzhou Vanke Golden Field of International Reception Center, taking “gathering” as the main conceptual axis, is aimed to build a social field that plays a role in the emotional attachment of contemporary life. Here, people can stay naturally, gather and interact.
Construction has started on the new Clare County Library in Ennis, Co Clare, in south-west Ireland.
Designed by Keith Williams Architects, the new 2,300m2 project for client Clare County Council has been conceived as a new cultural hub for the town and the region. It will abut the town’s existing Glór Theatre (2001) adding the new County Library and a small contemporary Art Gallery.
Building a city on a city” has long been the standard approach to urban renewal. Our modernityhas largely ignored and further complicated this practice that is now coming back all the more strongly due to the economic realities of construction being challenged by the severity of environmental issues.
Rehabilitating and preserving existing buildings, even over and above considerations of heritage, is becoming a viable means of saving energy and sobriety, a source of reusable materials and a great opportunity to discover new uses resulting from conversion. Entering a building with its past life and its history, its previous uses, means imagining new stories to tell based on older tales and the richness of their promise.
That is why we like to use the term “Metamorphosis” rather than rehabilitation: for us, it means building on the old to create something new and richer still than what might have been preserved.
Article source: ANDREAS SCHÜRING M.A. ARCHITEKT BDA
With the basic idea of order and freedom, the new library of the University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration in Cologne-Deutz manages to offer a high degree of adaptability and a large variety of levels of transparency on its 700 m². With its bright, open and inviting character, it is an attractive flagship of the university with around 2500 students.
Through the interweaving of highly transparent learning cubes and light acoustic curtains that can be adjusted as required, it functions as a complex structured one-room under an apparently limitless, all-connecting light ceiling.
The new library in Caudéran exudes serenity and is supremely functional, both in terms of quality and fitness for purpose. The building is in perfect harmony with the surrounding environment, symbolising the City of Bordeaux’s interest for each and every neighbourhood of the conurbation.’ Frédéric Neau, architect
The new Pierre Veilletet Library is part of an urban landscape redevelopment programme for the Stéhélin neighbourhood of the Bordeaux Caudéran area.
The project aims to ‘redefine the boundaries between sports, recreational activities and town through a number of interconnected programmes designed to transform the Stéhelin neighbourhood into a major hub for the people of Caudéran’.
Kulturhus Stompwijk is the new iconic living room in the village of Stompwijk for members of every generation.
The building houses the village community centre and a primary school with day-care centre and library.
The building is designed by Archipelontwerpers to be future proof. The distinct shape and orientation of the roof is designed to maximize the return of the solar panels. The building is not connected to the gas network and provides in its own energy-demand. Besides that, the design meets the highest standards in indoor climatic conditions, daylight and acoustics.
In the near future, will we still read physical books or need physical space for libraries? How do people use libraries differently with the change of lifestyle and the presence of the internet which has changed the way we access information and knowledge?
The project explores new possibilities of how a library could become.
Libraries today may continue to play an important role as learning space but it may not be the same anymore. There is an urge to rethink what a learning space is; and in particular what a learning space for an architecture school could become. To re-activate the library, the project has expanded the meaning of the architecture library to be more than a place for reading books, but to become ‘a creative incubator’ for students of architecture. Various programs are integrated into the new library. They range from a co-working space, an exhibition space, a pin-up space to an occasional lecture space where the library becomes a place for the exchange of ideas, and it includes not only physical books as sources of knowledge and inspiration but also digital media, movies, exhibition, etc.
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