This is a unique district library, located in a dense urban node of the city of Barcelona, a sculptural volume inspired by stacked blocks of books and seated on a square slightly elevated above the street and whose large gaps and voids dialogue with the environment.
The access arcade extends the pedestrian and cultural axis of the neighborhood and connects with the interior central courtyard that connects all of floors and brings natural light into the heart of the building.
Local
Spain
Barcelona, District San Marti
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-06-13
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): SUMA arquitectura Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Elena Last name of representative: Orte Gender: Female Nationality: Spain If relevant, please select your other nationality: Spain Function: Founding partner- architect Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: General Aranaz Street 109b Town: Madrid Postal code: 28043 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 917 72 90 01 E-mail:eorte@sumaarquitectura.eu Website:https://www.sumaarquitectura.eu/
URL:http://www.sumaarquitectura.eu/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): LinkedIn #design #building #wood #greendeal #architecture #ecosystemicdesing #library #barcelona #ecosystemicstructures #arquitectura #timber #sustainability
URL:https://www.instagram.com/sumaarquitectura_/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): Instagram #bibliotecaspúblicas #architectureawards #premiosarquitectura #maderalovers #estructurasenmadera #diseñoecosistémico #madera #arquitecturaenmadera #barcelona
4,294 m2 distributed over 5 floors. The building resembles an open book pile with folded and perforated sheets. Each "book" is created due to a dense structure of wood panels, oriented in different directions. Not only the structural requirements define each direction, but also the lighting conditions of the space, its character, the functional program and its urban links.
The structure presents three vertical cross-laminated timber cores, around where the different areas of the library are efficiently arranged. Two of these cores are triangular in shape and include stairways and elevators, which are located in juxtaposition to the interior courtyard. The third core, square in shape, encloses the restrooms and storage areas.
All the CLT panels required for the floor slabs, the vertical communication and service cores, the beams and the roof chimneys that enclose the skylights in the main areas were prefabricated in spruce wood. Including inside the factory, the cut-outs, trimming, milling and machining necessary to incorporate the lighting, the installations, the steel technification by means of anchor plates, spindles, bushings and profiles, the placement of hidden rebates and glazing beads for the glass partitions and the attachment of fire extinguishing equipment, such as the smoke curtains that close the main patio in case of emergency.
Public library
Wooden architecture
Palaces for the people
Circular architecture
Ecosystemic design
The project received the LEED GOLD CERTIFICATION.
The wood structure provides a series of innovative and attractive benefits that make it an ideal material to develop our architectural vision, increasing the sustainability of the project by the reduction of carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions and speeding up the construction process thanks to industrialization and prefabrication, enabling the project to be successful in terms of time and costs. it not only improves the immediate urban environment where it sits, but also the forests from which this wood is supplied (fsc or pefc certified forests). these forests are managed in an environmentally, socially beneficial and economically viable manner, being continuously renewed and ensuring that no damage is done to the surrounding environment, neither the native flora and fauna. in addition to forming a natural ecological habitat, these forests are an important carbon sink by filtering co₂ from the air and absorbing it in the tree biomass.
Not only has wood been introduced as a circular material, all the envelope material in turn has a defined cycling pathway. the composites formed by polyurethane resins and fiberglass that shape the facade slats, when their useful life in the building is over, can be reused, repaired or recycled in the most convenient way allowing to preserve more value for the next use
All this gives rise to a new paradigm of circular construction that takes into account the environmental and social externalities that generates, incorporating them into the equation and into the calculation of the total cost of resources, avoiding the consequences of the inefficient and unsustainable current system of linear construction, among which are the depletion of the planet's biocapacity. in short, the building is part of a new production and consumption model where resources and materials are permanently recycled and waste is minimized to the maximum, thus extending the life cycle of the products
During the project execution, we proposed from our studio the development of a pioneering program to implement inside the gabriel garcía márquez library with the full involvement of the consortium of libraries. We understand that libraries are the paradigm of public space, which have become catalysts and social condensers. From our point of view, their relevance is not based on the programs and activities they host and could occur anywhere else, but on their unique space intensity, on their qualities as ecosystem. In this way, we assume that the overall architecture of the library (the structure, the façade, etc.) Is directly related to the furniture, the program, the collection and the users.
The structure and its constructive definition defines and qualifies the space without apparent tectonic efforts and integrates the program, the envelope and the furniture of each ecosystem of the library. All the joints, connections and assemblies of the building have been designed, understanding the project as a great work of cabinetmaking, where hidden joints are encouraged, without hardware in sight. Tghis process increase the feeling of lightness and lightness of the building, resulting in a piece of presence as calm and light as permeable and luminous.
The architectural program is intense and dynamic because it acts as a true social condenser, which has captured and developed situations that foster the experience of information, exchange and the production of knowledge. The García Márquez library simultaneously offers different ecosystems reproducing the conditions of taking the fresh air (in the agora-showcase of the elevated plaza), of a gathering (in the space of the forum of ideas on the first floor), of a television set or a dramatized ceremony (in the extendable multipurpose room on the lower floor), of reading like at home, of a spiral of encounters (from the central staircase of the patio), etc. In this way, through the accumulation of the various ecosystems, the public library is configured as a welcoming space where everyone can find their place. THE LIBRARY IS EVERYONE'S HOME.
The Gabriel García Márquez Library in the Sant Martí de Provençals neighborhood is a development of the Barcelona City Council, promoted by BIMSA, a municipal infrastructure company, with the participation of the city's Library Consortium and the Sant Martí district as the institutions managing the facility. It is a neighborhood library that is inserted within the dense municipal network of local libraries that is committed to a closeness and relationship with the neighborhood it serves very intensely.
The president of the neighborhood association was part of the jury that chose the winning project of the competition, among other reasons for the iconic, differentiating and innovative character of the project, an architectural icon that would identify the neighborhood.
The Consorci de Biblioteques gave the neighbors their own space with independent access, configured as the historical archive that stores all the information of historical memory that the neighbors have been keeping and now have a place to store, mount exhibitions, transmit the history of the neighborhood. Likewise, neighborhood and educational organizations and associations have a radio station where they can share their work and activities in the Radio Studio on the lower floor of the library, also with independent access.
The pedestrianization of Concili de Trento Street was also a neighborhood initiative, which is integrated into the elevated plaza leading to the library.
The library project was a project promoted by BIMSA - municipality of Barcelona and joined the network of 40 libraries in Barcelona, the third largest.
In an area that required a new library because the one they had was 280 m2 and was not enough, also did not represent a symbol of a sense of belonging to the neighborhood.
In the words of the current mayor of Barcelona "Libraries are the most important and most valued facilities in Barcelona, it generates a new centrality, which is this idea of investing in the most popular neighborhoods, this is the pride of the neighborhood, the pride of the city. You come in here and you want to stay here forever".
We understand that libraries are the paradigm of public space, that they have become catalysts and social condensers. From our point of view, their relevance is not based on the programs and activities they host that could be found anywhere else, but on their unique spatial intensity, on their qualities as an ecosystem. In this way, we assume that the overall architecture of the library (the structure, the façade, etc.) is directly related to the furniture, the program, the collection and the users. MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS have been involved in this redefinition of the library program, from the specialized library staff, technicians, engineers, acoustic consultants to the users themselves and neighborhood representatives, scenographers, etc. We are not talking about social engineering, but about having extreme sensibility when working with our built environment. We are talking about a reflection that affects not only libraries, but our public spaces on which we build our society. It is a matter of reaching a new consensus in each case in which architecture, collection, activities, users and environment form a cohesive network: a new ecosystem.
1. Between May 28 (opening day) and December 31, 2022, the library had 152,000 visitors.
2. The library serves three neighborhoods (Sant Martí, La Verneda and La Pau), with a total of 54,000 inhabitants.
3. From May 30 (first day of library service) to December 31 (7 months) the following activities:
• 8 activities for children (296 attendees)
• 42 activities for adult audiences (2,225 attendees)
• 6 reading club sessions (133 attendees)
• 50 school visits (students from kindergarten to high school) with 1,168 attendees.
• 59 national and international institutional and professional visits (architects, city councils, librarians) (919 visitors).
4. The current collection is 32,000 copies (books, DVDs, CDs). The total capacity of the library is 40,000 (and 10,000 in storage on floor -1).
5. 79,217 collection loans.
6. 15 people employed.
7. A survey was made to the users during two afternoons, the users' valuation was very high and they especially emphasized the comfort.
8. Library has received the NAN 2022 award for best equipment / large infrastructures, the City of Barcelona 2022 Award for Architecture, Education, and Popular and Community Cultures, a recognition in the AITIM - ASA - ONESTA 2022 Wooden Architecture Awards.
When we started in our studio the project of the future Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona, after winning the competition, we felt that we could not limit ourselves to fulfill only the commission.
With this project we wanted to contribute to this global discussion with the research we carried out. With the participation of three students of the Master's Degree of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and the contribution of a Universia grant from Banco Santander, the work has resulted in a series of documents that the Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona welcomed with enough enthusiasm to then, in collaboration with the institution and the Diputación de Barcelona, work on the redefinition and improvement of the functional program of the future libraries of the province, in a line of work that we do not consider closed. During this time, we have combined the experience of our studio in library projects (Helsinki Central Library, Gran Tarajal Regional Library in Fuerteventura, etc.) and the enthusiasm and talent of our research collaborators, with the belief that libraries insurmountably embody our social aspiration for public space and the will to capture and develop their full potential as irreplaceable elements of our built environment.
Collecting actors and agencies and describing networks of relationships: following the postulates of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, not from a political point of view, but from the point of view of the sociologist who tries to explain what are the elements that make a given situation possible, small daily ecosystems of the city were represented.
Al fresco gatherings take place under the shelter of shadows and thresholds, under the protection of the heat (in the afternoon, in large places, but above all cool, where there is air movement); but also with the alibi of a common activity and the distraction of an event (children playing or people passing by). This is the only way for neighbors to appropriate the public space at the threshold of their private properties and bring their chairs out into the street. And it is only under the concurrence of this network of agencies that this phenomenon occurs.
To make explicit in order to reproduce: the objective was to unveil, reveal, make explicit, the elements, agents and actors that sustain our built environment. And, as creators (architects, librarians or social dynamizers), the purpose was to make it so that we could operate, modify and build with them; create ties and new associations, enroll new actors.
The difficulty of designing new ecosystems: Designing the physical space of the Gabriel García Márquez Library was not a scientific procedure, but rather a political task, in terms of the composition of the common environment. It was a non-objectifiable task, which responds to a certain state of affairs (presented as a controversial matter compared to, for example, scientific facts), which captures social and institutional aspirations and is materialized with limited resources. The methodology followed did not yield irrevocable conclusions, but rather fed the desire to redefine and improve the library program and open new doors in the design of ecosystems that are perceived as obsolescent.
1. The new library program that can be replicated and revised in any new library projects, described above.
2. Building with wood as a circular construction material, empathic material, wood structures not only solve the requirements of the building load transfer with the minimum amount of matter, in our case, the structure becomes a complex ecosystem that is approached from a holistic and relational point of view. The structure becomes (merges with) architecture.
1. If practically everything is available online, if digital media allow greater and faster access to information of a virtual nature, what competitive advantages does the physical space of the library offer? If we suffer from data saturation, our problem is not access to information. So why go to a library? We wanted to contribute to answering this question by considering libraries as the paradigm of public space. The overall architecture of the library (the structure, the façade, etc.) is not a separate problem from the furniture, the program, the collection and the users, and by this we incorporate the actions, the atmospheric conditions, the corporeal and the haptic. From our point of view, the relevance of libraries is not based on the programs and activities that they host and could occur elsewhere but on their fiscality, on their unique spatial intensity, on their qualities as an ecosystem.
2. The structure for us is not just a matter of solving the load requirements of the building with the minimum amount of matter. It is not just a matter of addressing global agendas by choosing the right materials (carbon footprint, material life cycles, etc.). The structures belong to a complex ecosystem that must be approached from a holistic and relational point of view: ecosistemic design
