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Songdo National Library

Songdo, South Korea · 2021

Songdo National Library began as a competition entry for a civic building in one of the most deliberately planned cities in the world. The design starts from a pure cube on the site and works subtractively. Gaps are opened through the volume to make outdoor rooms at every level, and the boundaries of those gaps are deformed into concave surfaces that take their curvature from traditional Korean architecture.

The outer skin follows from that move. The deformed edges read as curtain-like folds wrapped around the building, carried on slender round columns that stand inside the glass line, so the outdoor space belongs to the library rather than being added to it. The lower floors are pushed out toward Academy Street and pulled down to street level to make an obvious way in. Above them a public open-to-sky terrace is carved out of the mass, with a small amphitheater and a long view over the golf club and the city.

Across 7,998 square meters on six floors, the program runs from an underground theater and parking up through children's materials, general reading halls and administration. Half the site stays landscaped, and the water strategy is designed with it: drip irrigation and soil management on the planting, roof rainwater taken down to underground tanks beside the theater, and restroom greywater filtered and treated by phytoremediation before it returns to the irrigation loop.

Exterior colonnade of Songdo National Library at sunset, with slender round columns standing in front of full-height glazing. — The colonnade at street level. The columns stand inside the glass line, so the outdoor room belongs to the library rather than being added to it.

The library entrance hall, with a curved timber stair climbing through the atrium above a white curved reception desk. — The entrance hall, with the curved timber stair climbing through the atrium to the reading floors. The reception desk sits directly beneath it, so the way up is the first thing a visitor sees.

A reading floor at the balcony edge, with bookcases and chairs looking out over a coffered concrete roof and a courtyard below. — A reading floor on the balcony edge, looking down over the coffered roof of the level below. Bookcases sit inboard of the columns, and the perforated outer screen keeps direct sun off the desks.

The full library building at dusk, wrapped in a perforated white screen with a curved upper edge. — The building at dusk. The perforated screen wraps the whole volume and holds the curtain-like folds that give the library its identity from the street.

A nine-step massing diagram showing the library design developing from a pure cube to its final form. — The design in nine steps: a pure cube on the site, gaps opened through the volume, boundaries deformed into concave surfaces drawn from Korean architecture, the facade resolved as curtain-like folds, the lower floors extended and pulled down to street level, a terrace and amphitheater carved out at the top, and an urban forest planted around it.

An exploded axonometric water diagram showing rainwater collection, greywater collection and irrigation pipes through every floor of the library. — The water strategy, floor by floor: rainwater collected off the roof and taken down to underground tanks, greywater from the restrooms treated and returned, and both feeding the irrigation pipes that serve the planting on every level.

A drawing sheet with the site plan, six floor plans, an exploded zoning diagram and a table of site areas. — Site plan, six floor plans and the exploded zoning diagram. 9,427 square meters of land, a 2,450.25 square meter footprint, 7,998 square meters of floor area and 7,947 square meters kept as public open space.

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