Helsinki Public Library
The Library in the twenty-first century is one of the remaining few truly civic spaces. It is characteristic of both the town square and the kitchen table as it provides space and resources for its community to share and to find connections between opinions, ideas, and history. Libraries have become both learning spaces and learned spaces; spaces shaped by and for the users just as changes in collections, media and technology change how we learn as a culture.
The design of the Helsinki Public Library is therefore physically and symbolically interactive, introducing a platform in which the relationship between patron, collection, and library combine to create a redefined user experience.
Read More
The Central Library’s narrow north-south orientation allows for shallow floor plans to maximize the use of natural light – given Helsinki’s northern latitude, this takes on added significance. The floor plates further maximize these efforts by pinching at the mid-points, informing key spatial areas of intensified activity within the Library. These slightly curving floor plates facilitate connectivity between program areas and age groups, without losing usable area, providing opportunities for patrons to better understand and visualize the full extent of the Library’s services and collection.
The current affairs reading room, café, information areas, lounges and living studio are therefore provided with optimum natural light whether patron use these spaces in the morning, afternoon, or evening. The materiality of the building’s is characterized by a limited palate of neutral materials that emphasizes the timeless qualities of the Library’s bent plate floors as experienced both externally and internally.
Within the urban context, the curving ground floor provides both a slight elevated promontory to the park as well as a symbolic bridge between the urban form of the city and Makasiinipuisto park. The upper floor of the Library containing the collection becomes a lens for the user to take in dramatic views of Parliament House, Finlandia Hall, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the Helsinki Music Centre to the west. Given its’ extraordinary vantage point and prominent siting among other important civic institutions, the library becomes a symbolic cultural centre of the city experienced both externally and internally.
Project Stats
- Location: Helsinki, Finland
- Completion: 2012 (Competition)
- Client: Helsinki Metropolitan Area Libraries
- Size: 170,000 sq. ft.