Daegu Gosan Public Library

Daegu, Suseong-gu, South Korea, 2012

FBA’s proposal for this small communal library in Daegu’s Gosan district envisions the library not as built enclosure but as open-ended environment. Like in the surrounding park itself, strict boundaries are replaced by seamless transitions that create a fluid landscape of exchange and communication.
The Daegu Gosan Public Library (DGPL) is an informal field where an ever-growing diversity of media is allowed to interact in new ways of shared knowledge.

Situated in and defining an urban park, the DGPL is a landscape of transparent openness, inviting its surroundings to flow in and out of the building. Walking through the building, the visitors are lured to keep exploring the library’s depth on thin leaves that gently meander upwards and open up views to the park.

As if a condensed volume of static knowledge had been sliced open, then pulled apart to reveal and share the re-discovered knowledge in interactive dialogues through a network of spatially continuous interstices, the DGPL is a trajectory that unfolds over a 300m long sequence of loosely intertwined spaces. Books and other media are shelved along the spine in the centre of the building. Branching out from this central trajectory are places with views of the surrounding trees where reading, listening, watching, browsing is enjoyed amongst the leaves, making collective and individual activities possible without divisions.

Information is not compartmentalised but accessed and stored in interactive processes, anticipating libraries in an age where static possession has changed to interactive exchanges. The Daegu Gosan Public Library is an elastic archive for all.