National Library of the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
2006
One of the defining stances of 20th Century modernism was its insistence on the material and functional legibility of geometry. The relaxation of this ambition has led to a renewed interest in the classical tendency to confuse, through the use of cornices, bases, and architraves, the transitions between floors, walls and ceilings. However, instead of relying on these classical devices, this proposal for the New National Library of the Czech Republic actively researches the 21st century equivalent of such geometric relaxations. Through geometric contortions, elongations and fluid attachments, floors do not only become walls, but become circulation paths, corridors, structural members, apertures, and facades. The effect is one that combines the open plan legibility of modernism with the fluid transitory articulations of classicism