The LIBRARY is designed combining two parts:
The inner body
Freely articulated to maximize its functional and proxemic efficiency, it an-swers - without any façade formal constraint – the full range of requirements.
The external shell (theca)
Made of wooden fins and glass walls, it encloses the inner body, following the site square perimeter.
This combination generates:
The space between shell and body
A strategic, airy and luminous area. A generous, continuous and open one, yet protected and controlled. The Library main Lobby, and much more than that…
A LIBRARY, as a porous, translucent, urban building, enclosing a friendly open “city of culture”, is conceived to offer to the citizens a double level of perception and meaning:
The urban iconic one
With its strong but simple character, its memorable sculptural image - suggesting a disciplined but naturalistic row of trees – THECA LIBRARY shares, on par with the other important buildings facing the Makasiinipuisto Park, the privilege of defin-ing the civic heart of Helsinki
The library interior one
Already perceivable from far away, the interior is more and more inviting as you approach the building, until you enter and feel inside a true “cultural dis-trict”, a City Library indeed: with its main street - the multi-storey lobby –offering a broad view on the articulated building volumes, with balconies, open air terraces and interactive facings.
With passageways, restaurant, café, shops, cinema, multi-purpose hall, exhibition spaces, children performance and play area…similarly to what happens in a lively historical town district.
Moreover, while in contact with the various options offered by THECA, from inside you can enjoy feeling in visual and phisical continuity with the Park and the surrounding presence of the major city monuments.
This is furtherly enhanced by the shell fins orientation, which allows the most fa-vourable sunlight control and penetration, while facilitating at every step a full but different view over the surrounding cityscape.
FUNCTIONAL LAYOUT
The main entrance faces the Park, shifted towards the city centre, and marks an interrup-tion on the regular pattern of the façade wooden fins.
The main multi-storey lobby give access to the many services of the library at ground level from the shops to the multi-purpose hall.
It takes all the length of the building, ending with the café entrance, and It gives access to the cinema foyer and to exhibition spaces on the lower floor. From there the library is connected to the future underground multipurpose space.
The many functions housed at the upper floors (library, offices, workshops, living lab, Childrens’ World) face on the main lobby, and take from it light and views on the park through the mostly glazed front.
The main access to the upper floors is through an atrium hall with stairs and lifts on the side the main lobby, near to the entrances.
The horizontal connections between different functions on the same floor run along the front and back façades, suspended through the atrium.
The separate entrance dedicated to the café gives access to restaurant and public sauna, placed on the fourth floor.
The multi-media area is on the third floor, separated from the library by the atrium.
On the fourth floor, some functions (teaching and meeting, restaurant, sauna) benefit from large open air terraces, shaded by wooden beams continuing the façade fins pat-tern.
The main terrace is open to all, from those who want to take a book and read outside without living the library, to those who wont enjoy the good weather.
As for the vehicular access for service and loading, and consequently for library material handling, it has been decided to keep them at ground level. Those functions take a large area of the first floor, but the very long ramps otherwise necessary would have had a negative impact anyway on the usable floor space at ground level, on the adjacent func-tions and on the back façade.
