Civic Ecosystem, Song Do Library

Research through design, our Song Do Library proposal.

Designed with both a sense of material frugality and experiential monumentality, our proposal sees the Library as a dynamic movement of ideas within an ecosystem defining by two interacting environments: the central garden and main library’s stepped agora. Symbolic and active, the engineered timber shell closes and encloses this dialogue to signify the new public facility.  As a frugal typology in which every sqm of circulation is an active component of the library program, the stepped  internal landscape of the main library ensures sweeping views of the volume of the space and also of the external garden and the park beyond. The stepped internal landscape and the lifted roof scape are harmoniously united to embody the technological possibilities of our time at the service of environmental rigour and cultural ideals.

In line with our recent research on lightweight durable construction, the roof is core to a sustainable strategy collecting energy and water . The project leans on the principles of  ‘Shakkei’, or ’borrowed landscape of the park and golf course beyond to define the project’s framing of its internal and external curated nature.… More…