Aural Illumination

project: Stockholm City Library Competition

location: Stockholm, Sweden

date: 2006

scale: Urban Building

status: Speculative

design: Ramiro Diaz-Granados

 

This proposal for the Stockholm City Library employs acoustical behaviors to organize program, provoke formal production, and reconsider typology. As traditional libraries were treated as bastions of silence and dim lighting, both born from “ideal” conditions for reading, this project seeks to liberate sonic eccentricities by producing “white noise” as a desired condition.

The parti splits the library functions into two zones : research and leisure. The research zone is acoustically and optically controlled, similar to that of the traditional type. The leisure zone is based on current research findings stating that many people prefer to read in cafes and other public venues because of the background noise, or, white noise. The two zones are mediated by an articulated surface, with reading carrells, that is designed to generate white noise throughout the central space and keep it out along the perimeter. The surface acts like an acoustic liner and is subdivided into vertical strips of convex-to-concave surfaces. In addition, the proposal is directly connected to the existing Asplund library, producing a dialogue between two kinds of rotundas.