NAESOOP LIBRARY

Connecting the city and the forest, with the library as a medium. The Naesoop Library is located in front of the neighbourhood park at the Bidansan mountain, Sinsa-dong Eunpeyong-gu, close to six schools and densely populated residential areas. There is a road at the front of the site, Bidansan in the back, an elementary school and children playground on both sides. The site has about 9m of difference in elevation. The merit of its location at the entrance of the Sinsa Neighbourhood park at the Bidansan, the building is well used and appreciated by the residents nearby as a walkway, children playground, and a multipurpose outdoor rest area. The newly designed public library aimed at retaining these existing open spaces while focusing on the way of intimately relating diverse educational, social, and cultural programmes with nature — epitomized by the forest. The design of the new library intends to promote natural and direct access through the library into the park, which had been interrupted by the street. Also, the existing amenities were reconfigured at the upper levels of the library to connect them with the space inside the library. This was aimed to create a barrier-free connection in all directions from the street, park, and playground, and proposed as a concept for every programme of the library to extend to the park. More than two-thirds of the building’s volume was assimilated into the existing sloped topography, creating a walkway and a rest area. The minimal volume was also designed as a metaphor for the forest, allowing the library to visually expand from the Bidansan to the city. The library does not have a separate main hall, but it has six entrances that can be accessed from each different level, thoroughly being open to every direction of the forest inside the park. When one enters through a door that is found at any level at any time, one can immediately encounter the space of knowledge. Whilst wherever one leaves, the path will lead to the forest. If quietness and solemnity estranged us from libraries, Naesoop Library proposes a new kind of a local community place: it is where anyone can casually stop by after playing at the playground, strolling in the park, or while walking home from school; where one can meet the neighbours, participate in the programmes, or browse through the books. The material used for the part of the building that is buried in the ground or elevated above the ground is concrete, sharing a continuity with the Bidansan whose main foundation is a bedrock. The space on the upper levels — which is for storing key data and browsing it — is finished with fiber reinforced resin grating, in order to transmit the direct light inside, and as a continuation of the forest.​

 

 

 

Architect used architecture as a medium to spread the continuing scenery of the city-nature-resident-wisdom without any mutual exclusion, moving away from the conventional type of public library.​

 

 

The design was aimed to create a barrier-free connection in all directions from the street, park, and playground, and proposed as a concept for every programme of the library to extend to the park.

 

The space is composed by plates that resemble the topography and the circulation and the entrance were arranged between the plates, connecting the topography to the Naesoop Library building.​

The exposed volume was also designed as a metaphor for the forest, allowing the library to visually expand from the mountain to the city.​ 

 

---

114