Varna Contemporary Library

Year / 2018
Location / Varna, Bulgaria
Building Type / Library and Cultural Center
Building Area / 219,000 sf
Status / Competition

The Varna Contemporary Library is partitioned along the seam of two principles:

• A vertical library is a typological storage facility: Along with speed, accuracy, space savings, and controlled access, vertical storage offers advantages for processing items sensitive to dust, temperature, chemical reactions, and other environmental factors.

• A horizontal library possesses the potential for circulation and discovery:  Arraying books by adjacent topics, there builds over time an expansive landscape for immersion and engagement.

Structurally dependent upon the “towering  archival core”, the cantilevering deep beam of the horizontal “stack-floors” carries the internal structural grid by which traditional book stacks may be efficiently organized.  As each suite of stacks is fastened back to the archival mast, they are able to be sorted along the tapered volume, depending on user experience and functional space requirements. The division of the stack-floors into three major library components, allows for clear-span platforms to occur within the gaps, which may accommodate a variety of otherwise restricted functions (dance hall, media installation, outdoor activities, future stack floors, or whatever the public determines  as the library’s continually evolving role.  In some sense, these  platforms of library possibility create a third and open library type.  In this singular form, three distinct spatial systems emerge, each depending structurally on the library traditions and mediums which came before it.