D E   B I B L I O T H E C A

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Type: Commercial 

Status: Competition

Year: 2015

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De-Bibliotheca is the new proposed Ironbound Branch Library (IBL), located in Newark, NJ. The project begun by analyzing historical and new libraries to understand how they fulfill(ed) a civic role in their specific community and time. Site analysis is very important at the scale of neighborhood and parcel. From these analyses, it was necessary to develop a thesis that establishes the role the new proposed library will play in the Ironbound.

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Contemporary libraries have to be a place everyone is entitled to dream and create. The user has to feel empowered of its own future, and believe that anything is accomplishable. De-Biblioteca with it’s spaces filled with light, its layers and screens, formally tries to embrace this concept for the generation that will lead the new society in the future. 

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The project tries to integrate the “traditional” architecture of the site with an architecture well suited for the 21st century. Steel frame and program work together as a whole emphasizing the idea that the heart of modern knowledge is collective, the internet, and social interaction are today as responsible of our culture as much as books once were. Architecturally this translates with books stacks that become elevated structural cores. They hold metaphorically our knowledge, physically the circulation, and connect common areas or important parts of the program.