Library Buildings around the World

Though the 11,500-square-foot library’s three discrete, boulderlike shapes were informed by the rugged, mountainous terrain, they
also help the building stand out from the surrounding neighborhood, emphasizing its monumental scale and muscular stance. The
program is simply divided among the three masses: auditorium, library, and community center, which are linked by a rectilinear
concrete podium at the main level. The various areas are entered through this “covered public square,” which is topped with a wood
deck, connecting the volumes at the next level and offering dramatic views down into the valley through the voids between the
faceted mounds.
The facades’ glazing is limited to small square and rectangular windows grouped in irregular patterns on axis or on a diagonal.
Daylight enters the library and community center mostly by skylights that run around the periphery of the roof and bring light into
the broad floor-to-ceiling chasm between the poured-in-place concrete core and the steel-framed envelope, which is clad with dark
stone tile. The library’s core houses three stacked, double-height reading rooms, each ringed with computer stations in upper
balconylike mezzanines that look down on the rooms below. At its uppermost level, an event space tops off the core. The community
center holds a day care in one of the lower levels and, within the core, classrooms/workshops and an exhibition/event area. The
auditorium is a simple white space lined in drywall with dark strips of acoustic fabric on the back wall and ceiling. Its stadium
seating follows the steep contour of the hillside to which the whole building clings. The solitary source of daylight, a cluster of small
windows, admits light into the backstage area. Limiting apertures to create an inward-looking building was an intentional move by
Mazzanti. This “disconnects the people temporarily from their context,” says the architect. “We wanted to take people from this
poor community into another place and change their reality.” And it works: In the pleasant interiors, animated with children’s
activity, one quickly forgets the difficult realities of the world just beyond the library’s confines.
Mazzanti employed simple materials, such as the dark stone tile for the exterior walls, which comes from the Bogotá area; a local
stone tile for the floors, commonly referred to as “café pinto”; and drywall. Oak paneling sheathes many of the interiors in the
library core, and is accented with squares of lime-green laminated glass, while a dark stained patula pine wall system encloses the
core space in the community center.
Though the library has only been open about a year and a half, it is already showing signs of aging. There is water damage around
many of the windows, and some of the exterior tile, which is fastened to a fiber-cement-board substrate with rivets, has fallen off,
while a white efflorescence runs down portions of the facades. These problems are largely attributable to the difficulties of public
construction in Medellín. Among other things, Mazzanti says he had just three months for the design phase (which is typical for
public work), and that construction deadlines were pushed—and corners cut—to complete the building in time for a visit from King
Juan Carlos I of Spain who contributed a small sum toward the project (hence its name). Mazzanti, who says that he is working to
make the necessary repairs, also acknowledges that pushing the envelope with the design may have been a stretch for the
government-assigned local work crews, which use low-tech construction methods and low-skilled labor.
Construction quality is one factor that has left the Colombian architecture community divided on the library, which won the 2008
Iberoamerican Architecture Biennial award and has grabbed the widespread attention of the international press. “The fact that it
received an award has caused the first real uproar we have had in the architecture community for years,” says one Colombian
architect, explaining that some believe the library, among other things, is not representative of “Colombian architecture.” But others
question the existence of a single, authentic vernacular. “It’s not so much a Colombian tradition as a Salmona tradition,” says
another architect, referring to the detailed masonry work that became the hallmark of the revered late Colombian architect Rogelio
Salmona, a widely adopted approach with which Mazzanti does not actively identify. Instead, Mazzanti, who says he is “interested in
understanding conditions that reflect what the world is today,” maintains that inserting riskier, global architecture in this context
was necessary to create the symbolic gesture he was after.
With the Parque Biblioteca España, Mazzanti set out to create an icon, and in this he has been successful. With its site, bold forms,
and materials, the library is the most visible of the projects associated with Medellín’s recent program to use architecture to effect
social change. It has also helped catalyze a challenged community, especially its children, who flood the computer stations and play
and socialize on the deck. Additionally, the building has created a pride of place, with boys even greeting visitors getting off the
gondola by offering “architectural” tours. This is quite a change from the feared neighborhood of the recent past. Given all this, of
course, it is incumbent on the city to maintain the building: Watching a symbol of hope fall into disrepair could have troubling
consequences. It is critical that the powers that be in the municipal government have a continued interest in the Parque Biblioteca
España and other programs they have helped bring into the small world of Medellín.
Originally published in our November 2008 issue.
(http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/archives/0811parque-1.asp)
Biblioteca Ladera, Léon de Greiff, Medellin – Columbia 2007
Constructed Area: 6.800sqm, Services: Constructor AIA CONSTRUCTORES, Structural Engineer: Sergio Tobón, Materials:
Concrete, Wood, Glass
The aim is to establish a project that enables the biggest amount of urban connections and the development of public spaces. To
achieve this, there are several proposals such as enabling the roofing of the building as public space, empowering meeting places and
developing viewing-points which overlook the city.
Zonal Equipment – Management Strategy
The model allows the usage of communal facilities as small open spaced theatres, viewing-points, small plazas and sport fields when
placing them on the rooftop, leaving plain borders as vacuums inside the lot and thus enabling their external use. We propose a
management program between the EDU and the Culture Secretariat called “Film, Music and Theatre in my quarter”. This will
allow the usage of the above mentioned roofing as auditoriums so that every two weeks a cultural show can be taken to each quarter.
The place presents itself as a green viewing-point and a territory of connections between the lower and upper zones of the quarter,
which are actually used as areas for sport activities. The project we propose will redefine the existing paths and empower the
creation of shaded plazas on the library’s rooftop. As a result, it will not only multiply the connections because the building will be
an obliged path, but it will create more and more events as people intertwine in the public spaces provided around the library. More
than a transformation, we want to re-interpret the space so that it can be recreated into a symbolic place for the city. The project will
consist of a system conformed by three contained, rotated, squared modules that turn, adapting themselves to the landscape and the
view and one curved module that unites and relates the other modules and that, in addition, allows other uses. The project is a
landscape that gives the urban geography continuity through the paths and the building of public space on the rooftop, a landscape
constituted by paths, theatres or inclined plazas, a spatial network with connection multiplicity and meeting places.
PROGRAM:
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