Literal Phoenix - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, May, 2001 by Henry Miles

Linkoping's library offers a major city centre public space which locks into the noteworthy existing fabric with care and grace.

In September 1996, the library of the city of Linkoping, the county town of East Gothland, burnt down. This was a disaster for both town and scholarship, for it was not only the civic lending library, but the information centre, the diocesan and county library and the local public record office -- parts of the organization are 700 years old. Much was saved from the blaze, and a competition was launched for a new library to rise from the ruins of the old. The Nyren office won with a design that responds generously to both programme and site.

A big glass and timber box dominates the composition: this is the book hall, the main public space that looks out over a quiet park to the castle, cathedral and county hall. Entrance is from the west, where a new small triangular piazza against Ostgotagatan has been created, making a welcoming forecourt in which bicycles can be parked at decorous round concrete stands. The northern third side of the roughly triangular site is two storeys high to conform to the scale of Hunnebergsgatan, the medieval entrance to the city. Here, part of the earlier '70s building (by Bo Cederlof) survived the fire; it has been retained and complemented by a new piece in white stucco which echoes the scale of the brick original in the north-east corner of the composition.

From the entrance forecourt, something of the life of the organization can be seen through the glass wall. A generous, wide foyer runs along the whole length of the west wall, terminating to the south against the park in the cafeteria. Beyond the foyer is a long white inner building, which has an upper foyer for exhibitions at first floor level. Stage-set like stairs link the two foyers, making citizens into actors in a quiet and gentle civic play. If instead of going upstairs to the exhibitions, you go straight ahead from the entrance, under a bridge formed through the inner building, you emerge from that spatial constriction into the airy, luminous volume of the book hall.

Here, a generous wide path runs between the rows of bookstacks straight along the whole from west to east. The route is emphasized by roof lanterns which bring daylight into the middle of the deep plan, and by a line of artificial lights, not far above one's head which perform something of the same function as street lamps in open air thoroughfares. A grid of cylindrical grey concrete columns gives order to the space and provides support for the roof, where laminated pine primary and secondary beams support structural woodwool slabs. The timber roof, combined with the oak floor make for a warm quiet atmosphere in a place that might otherwise have seemed rather institutional with its orderly parallel rows of stacks. In fact, the architects have been careful to alleviate possible monotony by creating events almost randomly within the grid. Two coloured cylinders (one for children's tale telling) become aediculae, on top of which are terraces for quiet study. A couple of little rectangular blocks offer similar upper level terraces with private study rooms below. Two generous light wells in the main floor bring light and public access down to the basement, where stacks are both open and reserved. One of the great delights of the place is the proximity of the park, and the long row of leather-covered Jacobsen chairs in which visitors can snuggle with their books. When the sun becomes strong in summer, people can simply swivel so that they are shaded from it by the chair backs. Of course, the building cannot do this, and it might seem to be brave to make a library in an almost triple-height space which is glazed on all sides (to the north there is a clerestorey above the roof of the lower blocks on Hunnebergsgatan). The huge south-facing wall, where glass is supported in thin frames of laminated timber faced externally in oak, seems particularly problematical. But the architects and their advisers are convinced that a combination of automatically actuated windows in walls and lanterns, wide roof overhangs and automate d blinds will be able to hold radiation and heat gain to acceptable limits for both people and books. Further climate control is added by the generous limestone strip that surrounds the oak floor of the big room. Under the stone are pipes which can contribute radiant cooling, and of course heating in winter -- very necessary in such a cold climate.

Time will tell if the climate control methods will work as expected by the designers. But what is certain at the moment is that the city has acquired a gentle addition to castle and cathedral, which dignifies the centre in our time as they did in theirs.

Architect, landscape and Interiors Nyrens Arkitektkontor, Stockholm

Project team (architecture) Johan Nyren, Pontus Pyk, Lars Rosell, Olle Ahlborg, Susanna Juhlin, Pirkko Lampila, Liz Svedenius, Minna Tammisto

Project team (landscape) Bengt Isling, Nina Meden-Britth