Prague National Library

Site : Prague
Client : Czech Repuclic
Site : Prague, Czech Repuclic
Program : Reception spaces, exhibition rooms, offices – Competition
Size : 10 000 m2
Cost : 63 M €

 
The dialectic tension between built and unbuilt, static and dynamic, open and hermetic, formulates the experience of the new National Library of the Czech Republic. Seven hermetic towers housing the repositories of knowledge serve as the figurative anchors for the building, whereas the public realm weaves around the towers defining the programmatic identities of the project. 
The presence of nature in this building is ineluctable; mediating between the stone towers and the transparent volumes, interstitial gardens permeate the structure itself. The masks of flora on the towers, ever-changing with the seasons, render the building a chameleon character; like the mutable nature of knowledge itself, the library ceaselessly metamorphoses in time.
One moves through the building in a non-linear manner, encountering surprising views within and without: of the gardens, the river, Prague castle. The visitor is continuously confronted with vistas of the exterior world and the historical and urban context of Prague. Thus, though the programmatic divisions within the building are clear, the manner in which the volumes connect to the towers allows for the manifestation of unexpected proximities and revelations to occur within a rich and diverse spatial experience.