EMBT Enric Miralles. Palafolls Library
A year ago we visited this Miralles Library in Palafolls, then we were only able to tour it externally as seen in the video, and now that we are passing through Barcelona we come again to be inside. Yes, on the first visit we were surprised by how the extension of the walls and the depression of the floor allowed us to create diverse areas between trees and roof overhangs. When you sit down and walk through the interior, they become friendlier, we find ourselves with the surprise of a space that on the outside seems fragmented and on the inside appears unitary and diverse, accompanied by the perimeter placement of the shelves and wonderfully illuminated by the openings between the different deck plans. We have to come back another day to draw it and sit more calmly and watch the daylight pass by, just like we did in Berlin in the Scharoun library, so well told by Wim Wenders, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi8sYY0pCdE… If that Berlin space represented for my imagination the atmosphere of a library, now this building in Miralles adds to it, showing me how a place can become more everyday.
More information about this Miralles library in the article by Ignasi Bonet Peitx http://www.ub.edu/bid/25/bonet2.htm, in the interview with Bernardetta Tagliabue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I70MDBhVUiw, and on his studio website http://www.mirallestagliabue.com/project.asp?id=60
More information about libraries at http://www.bauenblog.info/es/
In the coming months, the 4th year students will be thinking about a library in two different areas, which is why Palafolls will return to these visits to introduce the concept and ask ourselves about what a library can be today, especially when it is built in an area metropolitan. I is that while the city extended its area of influence to increasingly larger territories and we can access a greater exchange of information, in many places urban culture and its spaces of relationship were closing in increasingly private places. Thus, to explain the collective living space at a local level, we need to understand the different relationship spaces fueled by residence and work mobility at the scale of its urban region. That is why, since the beginning of the course, we have been proposing a reflection on how the current city should be built so that it maintains at the same level its power to generate spiritual, cultural and economic wealth for each of its inhabitants. And now, with this project, we propose to investigate and imagine what the buildings and public spaces that allow this should be like.
The library is one of the community buildings that will receive the most changes in the coming years. Its image as a quiet place surrounded by books may disappear in a few years. Even if paper publications continue to exist, the increasingly widespread use of digital content will leave many empty spaces that can be used for other complementary uses, related to the exchange of content, education and creation. There are already public and community libraries that also lend children's games, instruments, and even kitchen tools and utensils (Oakland Public Library). But in addition, digital culture proposes another concept of a library, which does not function only as a repository of content, but as a place to inspire creativity through workshops and projects (Chicago YOUMedia). Multimedia spaces that cross the borders of the library, a third space beyond home or work for meeting and creating, designed not only to consult resources but also to create new content.
With this building managed by the neighborhood initiative, in addition to making a city we will question how to organize a complex form in the relationship between small and large spaces. This will be my students' first experience when designing a collective services building, a building in which complexity is measured not so much by its dimensions as by the diversity of functional areas it houses.