World’s biggest library reading space, in Beijing, was inspired by nature and designed to be a place where ‘everyone is under the same sky’
- The Beijing City Library houses the planet’s largest library reading space, designed to look like a valley of rice paddies with trees growing out of a river
- The Norwegian architectural firm that won a competition to design the library described the space as a ‘reading landscape’
What do you picture at mention of the word “library”? Mountains? Rivers? Trees? Rice paddies?
At 21,809 square metres (235,000 square feet), the cavernous expanse incorporates the dominant section of a building that might look intergalactic to some of its target audience: all sorts of people of all ages.
Its copper-coloured, environmentally friendly roof is peppered with photovoltaic components to maximise generation of renewable energy from sunlight. Below it stand multi-laminated transparent walls up to 16 metres (52 feet) high, constituting China’s first self-supporting glass facade, its zigzag, folded design meaning one piece bolsters the next.
As for that world-beating space, it’s no void. Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta, commissioned to design the library after winning an international competition in 2018, called it a “reading landscape” in early communiqués.
