Built on reclaimed land on the Southwest coast of Korea, Songdo is a smart city with a sustainable agenda. It was conceived as a pedestrian friendly city with 40% green space, and a park woven into the urban fabric. While working on the submission entry for a new library, the theme of the forest imposed itself and pushed the team of PAT. and Buonomo Veglia to think the building and the landscape as an integrated whole.
The scheme has a sort of indeterminacy inside an ordered structural system, allowing for flexibility and future adaptation without compromising the concept and overall look of the whole. 10 m wide structural bays define a series of slats whose varying length generates interstitial spaces infiltrated by the nature.
This move allows to break the mass along the perimeter of the library in smaller, human scaled spaces where everyone can find his unique place, creating a vast array of experiences.
Although its shape can evoke images of the curved pitches find in traditional temples and hanoks, the roof is first and foremost a machine to exploit sun and control daylight. Its aim is to collect as much solar radiation as possible to be for the production of electricity. At the same time it must gently filter the sun to provide the library with a generous amount of controlled daylight and provide protection and shade to the many open air terraces accessible from the reading areas.