A ground-breaking ceremony celebrated Danish architects, Schmidt Hammer Lassen’s, first library in China – located in the port city of Ningbo.
Founded in 1927, the original library possesses a long heritage of having the largest and diverse collection of historic and ancient books in the region. With this expansive array of reading material, the structure planned, will be able to house over 2 million books in a building of 30,000sqm.
Sitting at the edge of a new ecological wetland, the development will become a cultural hub for the new East town. Meanwhile, the organisational strategy is based on an open marketplace, where an 8,000 sqm open-plan space consisting of the popular library functions and collections- all based on the ground floor.
At the core of the library, a central atrium in the form of a giant book stack containing study desks, reading booths, internet stations and media spaces connect the open marketplace at ground level to the private research and historic collections above.
Shaped like a bookshelf, this will bring natural light deep in to the heart of the library during the day and act as an urban lantern at night. Futhermore, having this ‘marketplace’ arrangement will establish a visual connection to the public plaza, the lake and the park – a consistent theme seen in SHL’s library designs.
Instinct Furniture BLOG, mostly about cool libraries, furniture and design – keeping you abreast of our world. (Source: Designboom. Photography courtesy of Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects).
