Central Library Rijswijk, The Netherlands 1997 - 2004

The site is in Rijswijk, a small town outside of The Hague. The town features a public transportation hub that includes a train station, tram and bus stops, a taxi line, bicycle lanes and bicycle parking. Urban guidelines stipulated the creation of a new pedestrian square surrounded by offices, apartments, a leisure center and the central library to the south. A diagonal path through the square connects the train station and public transportation with existing offices to the south. The development of the square provided the opportunity to expand and modernize the central library of Rijswijk. The total library program provides for 3,400 square meters of space with the public functions all on one level. In our schematic designs we concluded that the library needed a public presence on the square and gave the building a front–of-house and back-of house program division. This is strongly expressed in the front building crescent shape and double high open space. The library crescent is entered off of the main square. The entrance floor consists of a double high entrance hall and supports a center for art lending, a reading café, exhibit space, and a book and media circulation desk. The mezzanine level in the crescent building contains the second floor administrative offices. The heart of the library is in the rear building under the parking garage. It contains 2,100 square meters of book stacks, children's library, study carrels and computer stations all in one open space. The main space constitutes a compartment that exceeds the fire department maximum without a sprinkler. A sprinkler is of course not desirable in a library and we did not want to loose the open space quality of the design by dividing the space with fire rated walls and doors. Our solution involves the installation of an industrial fire curtain, 28 m wide and 3m high. In the rolled up position it disappears in the ceiling and is designed to drop down to divide the space into two compartments in case of a fire. The library program stipulated a building that resembles a flat box. However, due to the integrated outdoor/indoor parking garage the simple volume features an interesting cross section. A parking floor on top of the main library space and one on its rooftop provides 200 parking places for the parking needs of the offices and apartments surrounding the square. None are for the library. The access ramp to the two levels of parking slices through the center of the building between the crescent and rectangular shaped volumes. We took the opportunity created by the intersection of the sloping surface with the straight walls of the building to create clearstory windows on one side of the ramp. These provide natural daylight into the center of the double high public hall. In keeping with the steel structure of the ramp, the access bridges and stairs to the garage are industrial in design and materials. The exterior of the building is designed to express the library function within and to unite the library and garage functions. The blue-on-silver and silver-on-blue bookshelf pattern is an abstract representation of a bookcase, the main feature found in any library. The alternating open and closed panels unite the total volume by enclosing the perimeter of both the library and the garage. A variation of the exterior panels features a screen-printed pattern on clear glass to allow for daylight in the library along the crescent facing the square. The panels are also intermittently absent along the garage floor perimeter to admit natural ventilation to the parking garage. In keeping with the library function we wanted the predominantly closed facade to express the collection of information in a clear minimalist way. So in the tradition of “architecture parlant” we proposed to commission a British artist, Rachel Whiteread to create solid panels in negative relief of books on bookcases. Our initial idea involved one or two variations that we arranged in an alternate pattern. The inverted bookcase proposal foundered on the problem that the focus of a contemporary library has shifted away from books toward electronic information and digital media. In fact, the new name of the Rijswijk central library is the “Center for Information and Culture”.