Library for Qujing Culture Center曲靖文化中心图书馆

As Aldo Rossi observed, every city needs a study room, and the library is that room. Michelangelo's Laurentian Library raises the question of whether a library belongs to the interior or the exterior of the city. Open to women and men, rich and poor alike, the library is a socially inclusive heterotopia in the modern city, a “house” for the collective; and because it orders the classification of knowledge, it is also a place of thought and a critical program for any civilization.

For the library of the Qujing Culture Center, designed with Hordor Design Group, Atelier Alter set out to reinvent the program by dissolving the separation between reading and storage. Intertwined, the two form an abstract field of knowledge in which visitors move easily from spaces of perception to spaces of projection. The pattern of circulation is tied directly to the trajectory of thought: moving through the building becomes an act of creation, cross-connections between fields of knowledge arise spontaneously, interdisciplinary study is encouraged, and critical ideas lie latent in this matrix of knowledge.

The architectural form is based on the architectonics of a “vertical folded plate”. The solids serve as structure and storage, while the voids between them become collective spaces for reading and gathering.