Description

The competition for an extendable book depot to hold the archives of various cultural institutions in Berlin was held in 2005, with the first stage of the project being completed and handed over in 2014. A second construction stage is planned for 2036, and a third in 2060. From the 30 competition submissions, a design by the Munich architect Eberhard Wimmer won through. The first stage of the complex measures 126 × 67 metres and houses 6 million books from the collections of the Berlin State Library (SBB) and the Ibero-American Institute (IAI) as well as 12 million analogue photographs from the Picture Agency for Fine Art, Culture and History (bpk). These are predominantly items that are rarely requested but nevertheless need to be kept available for academic use. The design concept takes the bookshelf as its starting point and stacks and layers it to form a “perpetually extendable building” that, despite its functional organisation principle, is conceived as a sculptured volume. A cuboid “dislodged” from the solid block of the depot marks the entrance, for example, while in the interior, individual modules have been “extracted” to create internal atriums.

The depot, which lies in Berlin-Friedrichshagen, more than 20 km away from Berlin’s two State Library buildings – one on Unter den Linden and the other at the Kulturforum – is not open to the public and is staffed by only a handful of people. Twice daily, a delivery vehicle collects and returns ordered items. The site of the library depot in Berlin-Friedrichshagen, a sub-district of Köpenick in the south-east of the city, was formerly the GDR Office for Standardisation, Measurement and Regulation and belonged to the government. Now largely cleared of its past buildings, it is large enough to accommodate the voluminous depot and its future extensions. It will additionally be joined by an adjacent Central Depot for Berlin’s National Museums (designed by AV1 Architekten, Kaiserslautern).

The interior of the library depot is dominated by the storage facility and its specific technical requirements, building services and air-conditioning. The focus of the architects’ design work therefore lay on the areas with which people come into contact: the foyer, the four atriums and the façades. The articulation of the façade creates a sense of tactility and interest using a pared-back palette of materials. With such a long construction horizon, a cladding material needed to be selected that would still be available in fifty years’ time. The south façade and foyer are correspondingly clad with “Verde San Francisco” stone from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Each stone module has a large, polished surface with a rough-cut slot at one side that acts as a faux vertical joint in the façade, delineating the structure. On the south-facing façade, these modules are used in three thicknesses dispersed across the façade, creating a modulated surface that casts changing shadows as the sun crosses the sky. The remaining façades are faced with storey-high precast concrete sections that fit the 1.20 metre grid. Between these elements, slender, vertical stone strips have been inserted end-on, which protrude to differing degrees like the spines of books on a shelf. Depending on the time of day and the weather, the play of shadows causes the four-storey façade to be read differently. This at once delicate and archaic solution brings to life a building that is in its function inherently silent.

Originally published in Bauwelt 28.2014, pp. 22-27, abridged and edited for Building Types Online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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