Under the motto “500,000 books” IMB Architects were the winners of the competition called for the reform and expansion of the Provincial Library of Vizcaya in 1999. The central axis of the project is the glass gap around which the different interaction spaces pivot and which articulates the different volumes with great functional clarity.
Here, we will highlight the volume of the extension intended for administrative and technical functions, fundamentally, and which houses the closed deposit, formalized as a large box containing books, with restricted access. The great symbolic and expressive load with which this volume was endowed was carried out through a large glass-enclosed closed box, which conceptually protected the books, while at the same time exposing them to the public at night, serving as a cultural attraction. Based on this design concept, a skin was developed constructively that allows environmental control of the hygrothermal and safety conditions very high, with a solar protection glass that controls the light that falls on the books, while also serving to project a very powerful image towards the public space. All of this is enhanced, both day and night, by the multiple silkscreens written in leagues from all over the world that make each module different.
For this project the solution was chosen modular curtain wall, capable of covering, with large glass surfaces, the entire envelope, from slab to slab with a single panel. Each module, which measures 2.30m x 2.60m and weighs 300kg, was fully prefabricated in workshop to install a total of 220 units in just 6 days. The system works like a construction kit that is placed from inside the building without the need for scaffolding, which provided efficiency on site and was a major advance at the time.
Photo report in Plataformy Architecture
COAVN Award 2010
2008 Work selected for XI VENICE BIENNALE OF INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE