Library Buildings around the World

Portugal
Aires Mateus & Associados, LDA, Lisboa – Portugal
http://www.airesmateus.com
Libraries :
Sines Art Centre, Sines – Portugal 2005
The building is situated at the start of the main street – the Rua Cândido dos Reis - linking the town to the sea and marking the
traditional entrance to the historic centre. This building combines diverse activities: exhibition rooms, a library, cinema-and-theatre
and a documentation centre. Its exterior copies the volumes of the monumental scale of the castle walls. At street level the building
offers an unbroken view right across the inside of the building, including the activity of the centre in the daily life of the town. On top
of the building, near the library, is a bar with a terrace, which offers an amazing panoramic view over the historic city and the
ocean. The design was one of the 7 nominated projects for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2007.
ARX Portugal Architectos, Lisboa – Portugal
http://www.arx.pt
Libraries:
Ílhavo City Library, Ílhavo - Portugal 2004 - 2005
Ílhavo City Library is located in the remains of the Manor Visconde de Almeida, a noble house from the 17th-18th century, later
transformed and demolished. From the original building only the main façade, oriented southeast, and the chapel, both in ruins,
were left. There was no trace from the carriage porch which completed the building on the southwestern end. However, all elements
remaining from the old construction were examples of qualified architecture, in their proportion and elegance of the masonry.
This type of legacy is rare in Ílhavo and it was therefore assumed that it should be preserved and integrated in the new project. The
building is located on the periphery of the town, an area with little urban expansion, still fairly inarticulated and problematic. We
chose not only to design an object, the library, but to intervene in the clarification and consolidation of urban fragments and volumes
with no apparent overall coherence. The preliminary program, whose extension could not be confined to the space of the remaining
manor, determined the intention of building three autonomous nuclei: Library, Chapel and Youth Forum. The limits of the manor
and the line of the old façade were chosen as an anchorage point, where administrative areas and programmes compatible with the
façade's rhythm were placed, restoring the character of the original building, which was then only a decadent scenario. There is
nevertheless a clear identification of the new, which exists in symbiosis with the pre-existence. The concept behind the rest evolves
from an understanding of the public and civic character of the building, whose urban role was reinforced. The design of the reading
rooms and youth forum, external to the manor, establish direct morphological relations with the surroundings, thus making the
architecture work in context as a closing piece which incorporates the physionomy and traces of the surroundings. This stratey
would not make sense in any other context. The chapel, deprived of its most impotant decorative elements, like tiles, woodwork,
tomb stones and furniture was restored in essence preserving all possible evidence of its lost past. The furniture and the new altar
panels by Pedro Calapez, were designed in an unequivocally contemporary style, which rediscovers the typology of original
polichromic work. The chapel has been reopened for religious service, just as it was before restoration. (ARX)
a.s* -Atelier de Santos, Lisboa – Portugal
http://www.projects.as
Libraries :
Escola Secundária EB3 Luís de Freitas Branco, Paço de Arcos (Oeiras) - Portugal under construction
Client : Parque Escolar EPE, 17 216 m2
O complexo escolar está dividido em 9 edifícios distintos, sendo que dos quais 4 são pré-existentes (3 edifícios com salas de aula e 1
pavilhão gimno-desportivo) e 5 serão construídos de raiz. Os restantes 5 edifícios existentes serão demolidos.
Nos 3 Pavilhões existentes ficará localizada a totalidade dos espaços destinados ao Ensino Geral: Salas de Aula de 25 Alunos, Salas
de Pequenos Grupos, Sala para Grandes Grupos, bem como os respetivos espaços de apoio. Nos edifícios novos serão albergados os
espaços sociais, as salas TIC, a portaria, os espaços especializados para as artes e expressões, bem como as oficinas de mecânica e
eletricidade.
Prevê-se uma circulação exterior coberta para ligação entre o Pavilhão Central e as Instalações para Educação Física e Desporto,
que serão ampliadas de modo a conter um novo Campo de Jogos para Basquete, Voleibol e Andebol, bem como uma Pista de Saltos.
Nestas instalações incluem-se novos balneários para professores e alunos, em estreita ligação com o Pavilhão Gimno-desportivo.
Para a ligação entre o Complexo Escolar e o Pavilhão Gimno-desportivo prevê-se a criação de um novo acesso em rampa elevada.
(http://www.afaconsult.com)
Azores University´s Library, Ponta Delgada, Azores – Portugal 1997 – 2004
Project : Projecto de Recuperação e Ampliação do Edifício dos Serviços de Documentação da Universidade dos Açores/Biblioteca
Central, Location : Campus Universitário de Ponta Delgada, Rua de São Gonçalo, Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Açores, Client :
Universidade dos Açores
The Central Library stands on a periphery site of the University Campus, occupying a narrow parcel near the parking area of the
institution, next to the city limits of Ponta Delgada. Following the competition brief, the project had to maintain a small existing
building.The library’s functional organization takes over the existing building, which is overlapped by an assemblage of different
open spaces, that are divided within themselves by different levels. Joining those plateauxs at diverse highs, a system of ramps
crosses through all the central space, connecting therefore the campus and the city from the inside, inviting users to pass by each of
the reading rooms, in-between shelves filled by books.
In this public circulation circuit, an enormous skylight that accompanies the ramp structure gives the ambient luminance.
1