01— Public Library Entrance from Convensia Street (Accessible Entrance) 02— Public pedestrian access to site from Convensia Street 03— Parking Ramp Entrance 04— Monumental Public Stair to Main Library Lobby / Info Desk 05— Elevated Public Plaza 06— Sunken Public Plaza (events space) 07— Below Grade Parking Entrance 08— Stepped Outdoor Theater 09— Public Plaza 10— Public pedestrian access to site from Academy Street 11— Landscape Buffer 12— Rooftop Playscape for Children
1. Central Building Core (Load Bearing, CIP Concrete) 2. Central Court (Framed, Mass Timber) 3. Central Stacks (Framed, Mass Timber with CLT Slabs) 4. Perimeter Programs (Load Bearing, CIP Concrete)
Library of Songdo International City
International Design Competition
Civic / Cultural Building
Songdo, S. Korea
2021
101,400 sf
**2021 AIA Virginia Design Excellence Award in Unbuilt Category**
Credits
Project Text
Incheon Metropolitan City’s target objective for The Library of SONGDO International City is to orient ‘An International City of Northeast Asia to the World’ and expand the cultural infrastructure for local residents. Incheon Metropolitan City is established a principle that orients ‘the city close to culture spaces’ and a public library is an essential tool to promote this relationship. This library has upgraded its role as the place of information communication for the citizens and has the status as a central library of Incheon, serving to orient the public to community focused cultural activities and art functions.
Homi Bhabha’s concept of “third space”, which acknowledges nuanced conditions of hybridity and diversity in cultural identity, serves as a conceptual platform upon which to build a contemporary library. Whereas traditional libraries represent an absolute space designed to fulfill a single sociocultural function, “third space” is indeterminate, open to appropriation, playful and generative. The library as third space resists traditional librarian concepts and classification systems, which are often biased by Western philosophy and can too rigidly structure the use of library space. It can accommodate the multiple paradoxes embedded in the 21st C. library:
the World Wide Web is a library but libraries continue to perform pivotal civic, educational and economic roles; information is readily at our fingertips, but we still need help navigating its past, present and future multiply versioned formats; we love solitary and mobile modes of study and work as much as we need places for collaboration, random interactions and discoveries.
This project explores the architectural opportunities to manifest these pluralistic modes of intellectual and physical production by organizing space around three “Spatial Shelves.”
1— The Central Collective Space, a space of books and void.
2 — The in-between Circulatory Space, a space, a space of movement and linearity.
3 — The Programed Space, a space of rooms, repose, and utility.
This layering of three concepts of spatial use, organization, and flexibility influences all other aspects of the design from materiality to lighting.
Design Team
Seth McDowell, Omer Gorashi
