Library Buildings around the World

Giancarlo Mazzanti Arquitectos, Bogotā - Columbia
http://www.giancarlomazzanti.com
Libraries:
Biblioteca España, Santo Domingo Savio, Medellin – Columbia 2007
Architect: Giancarlo Mazzanti, Collaborators: Andrés Sarmiento, Juan Manuel Gil, Freddy Pantoja, Camilo Mora, Pedro Saa,
Alejandro Piña, Iván Ucros, Gustavo Vásquez, Constructed Area: 5500 sqm, Concrete Structure: Sergio Tobón, Steel Structure:
Alberto Ashner
Background and needs
The Project is located on one of the hillsides that have been affected by the violence since the 80´s because of the drug traffic network
that operates in the city of Medellin. It is part of the government’s social master plan program to give equal economic and social
opportunities to the population. The program asked for a building with library, training room, administration room and auditorium
on a unique volume. The proposal was to fragment the program in three groups: The library, the rooms, and the auditorium; then
join them with a bottom platform that allows flexibility and autonomy, improving the people’s participation considering each
volume operates independently.
Justification of the adopted composed solution
Medellín is geographically mountainous. The city is located in the north of Los Andes mountain ridge, one of the most
topographically broken places of Colombia. This geography defines the identity and the image of the city. This image is precisely
what the project aims at, it intends to integrate itself into the landscape and become an interpretation of it.
Architecture as landscape
More than a building, it proposes the construction of an operative geography that belongs to the valley like a mechanism of
organization of the program and the zone, showing the unknown directions of the irregular mountain contours, not like a metaphor,
but like an organization of the form in the place, a folded building cut like the mountains. A landscape building that redefines the
folded mountain structure in form and space, nullifying the idea of the landscape like a background and encouraging the ambiguity
building-landscape. Justification of the urban insertion of the proposal
The Place:
The Project is organized in two structures: the first one is the building – landscape (rocks) and the second one is a platform that
integrates and transforms the cover into a square that looks into the valley; this way, the building is empowered as a meeting place,
multiplying the connections and letting it develop as a reference point.
The building like an icon
The place is made by small brick houses, product of auto construction; and residue of green areas as a result of the impossibility of
construction on it. This organization produces a uniform texture of the city like a building – landscape, like an icon, keeping the
tension that already exists. Geography as an element of hierarchy; and architecture as the epitome of texture. The Project is
noticeable from a big part of the city, allowing it to redefine itself as the symbol of a new Medellín, as a way of making people feel
identified and receiving the building as their own. In the present state, the building is one of the touristic points in the city and one of
the most visited.
Ambient and atmosphere
Additionally to make an icon building, the first premise was to develop a construction that, through its interior design, could
descontextualize the individual from the poverty that is experienced in the outside creating a warm atmosphere based on natural
light, allowing a great ambient of study and lecture. This is the reason why the building takes a timid look into the city trough the
small windows that show the relation with the valley, letting the illumination go into the top of the building.
(http://www.archdaily.com)
Giancarlo Mazzanti builds an icon to foster optimism in Medellín, Colombia, with his Parque Biblioteca España.
By Beth Broome
Although Medellín, Colombia, a valley metropolis of more than two million in the northern reaches of the Andes, is sometimes called
the City of Eternal Spring, it is better known for its erstwhile reputation as Murder Capital of the World. It earned its nickname
when drug lord Pablo Escobar and his minions made it the center of their business operations in the second half of the 20th century,
and guerilla and paramilitary groups and street gangs proliferated in their wake. Though Escobar was “taken out” 15 years ago and
the crime rate has dropped dramatically, Medellín has been fighting a long uphill battle to reinvent itself and gain back its
reputation as a vibrant commercial and academic center.
Following in the footsteps of the country’s capital, Bogotá, the city started developing a social master plan in the late 1990s. By
creating infrastructure, architecture, and community programs, the government hoped to bring opportunity to the lower classes (to
repay a historical social debt of inequity), improve the quality of life for all, and draw business and tourism to Medellín. Since the
turn of the millennium, the city has been experiencing a building boom (guided most notably by Mayor Sergio Fajardo) of parks,
housing, schools, libraries, and new public transportation—concentrated primarily in poorer neighborhoods—for which it has
employed many accomplished designers from within the country.
In 2005, Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, whose firm is based in Bogotá, was awarded two public commissions by way of
open competition, and has designed a pair of libraries, one in the neighborhood of La Ladera, the other the Parque Biblioteca
España, whose striking, unorthodox form sits in stark contrast to the makeshift architecture around it in Santo Domingo Savio
barrio.
Completed in 2007 at a total cost of about $4 million, Parque Biblioteca España, which looks out over the valley from its hillside
perch among simple brick and stucco structures, has a profound presence and has caused quite a stir, which has spread far beyond
the neighborhood. At the end of the last century, the Santo Domingo Savio barrio was considered one of the most violent in all Latin
America—so dangerous that the police purportedly would rarely enter. Though much improved today (no longer dominated by a
panoply of outlaws, it is now fairly safe to walk around), it is still an impoverished district. Few cars use the winding, narrow streets,
so a strange silence pervades, penetrated by the rattling of homemade go-carts that children race down the hills. Most people enter
the neighborhood by way of the new Metrocable, a gondola that serves some of the city’s more depressed and inaccessible areas.
Mazzanti responded to this most unusual site by building not just a public facility in a densely populated community, but also a point
of pride for the neighborhood and a symbol for the larger city. The program requirements were straightforward, calling for a
library, auditorium, classrooms, and administration areas.
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