Presenting a public art strategy deeply embedded within the design of the building & plaza as a whole, the proposal by Bild + INDEX is entwined and inseparable from the aesthetic, function, and environmental performance of the plaza and building as a unified design proposition. The key element of this strategy is the use of text as an aesthetic motif, acting as a functional and environmental performance element within the design. In the library’s traditional role as the community’s repository for and interface with information, text and typography have enormous historic resonance and offers significant potential in negotiating the project’s interaction in the wider urban domain. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Text is imprinted in the building façade, on multiple levels. Across the western, northern and eastern facades a source text is arrayed across the facade with individual letters scaled subject to the cumulative heat load the façade experiences from the summer solstice to the equinox; the scaling of the letters increases or decreases the total solar permeability of the screening element; providing a highly calibrated passive solar screen fixed to the outer face of the building’s mullions. The scaling of the text also varies the legibility of the typography, oscillating between legibility and pattern – often teetering between decoration and content, but never fully either.
