The project integrates the public library with a botanical garden. A 250 meter steel, concrete and glass structure surrounded by greenery and water.
The design is based in four fundamental considerations :
- Mexico City is one of the largest, most polluted and agresive urban environments in the planet. We believe that the planning of public funded buildings should always encourage the expansion of car-free open spaces and greenery
- The specific area where the project was built was a barren urban landscape
- The buildings and gardens generate a new pole of urban ecological regeneration that expands over a densely populated area
- The library is itself an attempt at reorganizing available human knowledge
The Botanical Garden houses a comprehensive array of Mexicos endemic flora. Culture and nature, often on opposing sides, form a unity in which the visitor can reconcile their co-existence. The reading areas offer the user an opportunity for experimenting direct contact with nature. All areas profit from natural lighting and ventilation.
The library is a great ship that navigates through time enveloped in a garden that´s always itself and always new.
The library is a tripartite bilateral symmetrical structure with three bays of hanging book stacks in the center, readings areas on the perimeter. The grand lobby is a civic landscape, with stairs leading up to the bookstacks on both sides. The concrete slabs are functioning as grids. The ventilation system is a special one where air comes in through the slits on the facades and comes into the central atrium up to the roof. The essence of the library is the space between the staggered bookstacks, with the rhyme of the bays accentuating the perspectives. The books are objectified and are almost data-like, rather inaccesible
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