
Designed by JBAD (Jonathan Barnes Architecture and Design), the proposal for the Daegu Gosan Public Library proposes to simply, and radically, invert the conventional relationship of public space, circulation and access. In doing so, the public space typically defined and confined as interior, enclosed space becomes externalized, extroverted, stretched, and reformed. With their ”INversion’ concept, the way of interpreting the library as structure and space provides an opportunity to create exterior public space in ways that are both more integrated with the library’s functions and more connected to its urban context. More images and architects’ description after the break.
As the concept of the library in the 21st Century advances in a direction that departs significantly from conventional notions of the library experience and purpose, some of the more essential architectural assumptions of the type also must be questioned. Libraries are quickly transforming and being redefined as centers of information, community, culture and creativity. They are becoming places of exchange, generation and reinterpretation – not simply a portal to the past, but a source of the future. They are responding to demands for more access to more people, in more ways, for more reasons.
