Copenhagen Library | Germana Trione

Traditionally, a library is a lonesome and silent place, with meditative atmospheres because of the aim of support the concentration. This is a surrounding more appropriate for studying than for reading for pleasure: it's a closed and stiff environment both about spatial conception, furniture and paths. The user's action are chosen avoiding to overstep certain frames. It's a place more book-orientated than man-orientated.

Maybe this is why not everyone feels easy and comfortable in a library.

Although I don't want to elude the security rules and to sacrifice the protection of books safeguarded in these places, nor despise the holiness of some examples of library where you're persuaded to lower your tone just for instinct, it's possible to mitigate the austerity and make the atmosphere more easy for the user.

The New Library avoids to force the user to rigid movements, facilitating the walk through consultations and reading rooms rather than the stasis; the sociality and the sharing rather than the loneliness.

Instead of combine the various functions, leaving them isolated the one from the others, I intended to connect them in a only wide space for consulting and distribution at the same time.

Starting from a big entrance hall, you can walk through an upward path in a series of reading rooms which envelops the entire building and ends above the hall, in front of the Canal and the Opera of Copenaghen.

Each reading room is at its own height, separated from the others by 1,60 m. You can move from one to the others with stairs. Near these there is a series of shelves for books that you can use like seats, too: I tried to integrate the furniture and the architecture so that the first ore would contribute to define the second one. But these shelves contribute to a more informal attitude towards the library, too: you can just take a book and leaf through it without turning to the Taking Desk.

At the corner of the building the height stops to rise: here it's constant so that there are bigger spaces. In these ones are collocated the multimedia areas. On big collective tables you can use tablets, personal computers, e-books and other digital tools. You can relax on bean bag chairs and ottomans scattered through the library, allowing to soften the austerity of the studying space. You can create little snug sitting rooms where read comfortably, use a digital tool or consult other people.

In addition to traditional desks, each reading room has a "reading cell", the very isolated space dedicated to the reading, but completely reconsidered from the tradition, in favour of a better harmony with the readers' habits.

The famous "Invitation to the reader" by Italo Calvino, in "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore", says:

“You're beginning to read the new novel Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino.

Relax. Concentrate. Remove from your head any other thought. Allow the world around you soften in the vague. It's best to close the door; beyond it there is always the television turned on. Say it immediately to the others: <<No, I don't want to see the television>>. Speak loud, or they won't listen to you: <<I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!>> Maybe they didn't hear you with all that noise; say it louder, shout: <<I'm beginning to read the new novel by Italo Calvino!>> Or, if you don't want to say it, let's hope they will leave you in peace.

Get the most comfortable position: seated, laying down, rolled into a ball, set down. Setting down on the back, on the side, face down. On the armchair, on the sofa, on the rocking chair, on the deck-chair, on the bean bag chair. On the hammock, if you have got an hammock. On the bed, obviously, or in the bed. You can also turn yourself on your head, in yoga position. With the book upside down, it's obvious.

Of course, the ideal position for reading can't be found out. Once it was usual to read standing, in front of the book holder. They were accustomed to stand on their heels. They rested in this way when they were tired to go horse-riding. No one thought to read horse-riding; however now the idea of reading being on the saddle, the book placed on the horse mane, maybe hanging from horse ears with special housing, seems attractive to you. It should be comfortable to read with the feet in the stirrups; to get the feet raised is the very first condition for enjoy the reading.“

The readers often don't prefer to read seated (like a traditional library pretends, with the aggravating of being done up seated), but they indulge to lay down in different ways, proving how Italo Calvino was right inviting the reader to choose the more comfortable and personal position. The traditional library ignores this feature of the pleasure of the reading and it forces the reader to be seated, a position more appropriate for work or study, but more rigid and uncomfortable.

Answering to this necessity, the "reading cells" give space to the disordered reading: covered with pillows, they allow to seat, lay down, roll over, lift the foot or just to admire the city framed in the transparent window. Form outside you will just distinguish shadows moving in the "reading cell". In it you will have the loneliness necessary for penetrating in the novel, leaving behind your shoulders the real world.

The outdoor path is complementary of the indoor one: like the reading rooms are a series of regular volumes in an upward spiral, so their roofings take shape of an outdoor path, parallel to the indoor one and which ends in the same point, above the canal. This path is accessible from the cafeteria and is occasion for the indoor functions to go outdoor: it will be possible to live the outdoor space, to read books, to meet and chat.

The internal court has a reception role: it is accessible by bicycles through a passage in the building and there the bike parking is seated. It's the only green space of the building, in its hearth, while the other spaces are related to the city and the canal.

From here the two fundamental spaces of the building are accessible: the hall and the bookshop. These are sited at two opposite extremes of the building and they are visually separated from the remainder of the building but functionally integrated with it. In fact, differently from the other parts of the building, they are two parallelepipeds completely glazed, which come out of the building outline, both towards the street and the inner court. Inside of these, there are full-height spaces with vertical connections alternative to the upward path which can be passed by completely or just in part.

As said, in these volumes are placed functions which are related to the public access more than the others: the bookshop, for example, can be functionally independent from the reminder building thanks to separate entries, but at the same time  it is accessible Through vertical connections.

Above the hall there are the cafeteria and the bar, functions traditionally apart from where the books are stored. In this case I preferred to seat these functions in a place accessible from the library so that it could be possible to read drinking a coffee, maybe even outside, being the bar related to the outside spaces. In can be easily accessible from the hall through the principal stair and elevator.

The kids area is above the hall and the cafeteria, in a protect area, easily closable and accessible, like a place where are kids should be. Other functions complementary to the library are placed in the volumes obtained below the upward path of consultation rooms. In this way, even preserving the fluidity of the spiral space, it's possible to create more reserved and traditional spaces in the grounds below, allowing different functions to be placed here.

The functional program  has been increased with other  alternative functions: offices; laboratories for book restoration and conservation or accessory activities organized by the library; staff spaces; lecture rooms with different sizes; stores; warehouses, etc.

For the familiarity of the building it's also important to use the color: as like the more photographed glimpse in Nyhavn has facades differently painted with bright colors, in the same way I acquired some colors for the façade of the library. The cladding of windowless walls consist of a cover of sheets of three different sizes and six different colors, combined throughout the building like in a puzzle. The result is playful, variable depending on the point of view and the particular light that Copenaghen can offer. This cladding compact and regular, is spaced out with windows and it is extended to the glazed stripe which closes the reading room, even if in a sparer way, declaring the evolution of the spiral path. Here the sheets have also the function of screening and governing the natural light, for safeguarding a comfortable illumination.

The colors chosen for the sheets recall the ones used for Nyhavn facades, creating a puzzle of bright tonalities combined.

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Today is the most important day since we conceived this project. It was a long process: to make a desire true, to put into effect an idea is so hard sometimes. There isn’t always a Fairy Godmother to magically rescue the situation. And, I’ll tell you, it’s better if there isn’t: they gyp you sometimes! You ought to be the Fairy Godmother for yourself and change the magic in a sequence of rational and controllable actions. Still, there’s no poetry in this, but life is prosaic around here.

We wanted a place where take shelter, all safe. Where be ourselves and tell our stories without feeling obsolete and isolated each one in their own world. How many well educated, faithful and gentle young maids have been set apart from girls covered with glitter? How many spotless and fearless guys have been forgotten replaced by pale, black-dressed fellows, wearing sunglasses during night? How many good workers, proud of going to work whistling everyday, have been forced to early retire because they couldn’t keep up with new technology and no one respected anymore their mastery handed down from one generation to another? How many did find themselves doing humbling jobs, unworthy of their titles, because they wouldn’t or couldn’t give up and retire when still successful? How many have been told they were hyper-qualified, but not up with the times; authoritative, but too sophisticated; revolutionary, but bound to the past; professional but too much leading lady…

Well, we have feelings, too and after so many doors slammed on our faces, we ended with turning in our houses, once crowded with fans, now empty, recalling more glorious times. They were harsh days. I know that some haven’t come out for months; others started writing journals about their days all alike and reading them aloud over and over again, to feel main character of something again; some couldn’t dream anymore and, as a consequence, they couldn’t hope.

Unfortunately we had to reach the bottom before starting to climb back: when I realized that Alice had whored until she became a porno-star, dragging with her all the friends who had been close to her during the years, I understood it was necessary to take the lead on the issue. Maybe Alice will be impossible to persuade: she comes from that environment and it was hard enough to emancipate once. But there is still hope for the others.

So I bought a field near my house; I talked with a bunch or right people –and with some of the wrong ones, too-; I commissioned the project to a guy who wasn’t that good at it, but who had the head so high in the clouds that he would fit for my purpose; and then day by day I saw it growing.

Today it’s ready and some old guard guys are coming to set in: I combed my hair with the silver fork, I wore my best shell necklace; I moved early from my rock through the Canal to the Library to host Princes and Princesses from Fantasy Land in the place they deserve.