Project
“Ceci n´est pas une bibliothèque
This project arises in the context of an architectural competition organized by the Madrid City Council to create three new libraries -in three different neighborhoods- that completes the city’s library network.
We propose to act on the network of libraries instead of on isolated places. Act on the network as if it was an indivisible organism, instead of creating indivudual libraries. To Consolidate the network, to Reinvent it.
A series of spaces that complement each other instead of a sum of repeated spaces.
Is exactly another library what the network of libraries in Madrid needs in Las Tablas neighborhood?
We are going to put a cherry on the cake.
We imagine a secret garden in Candanchú Street, hidden behind its four walls. A contemporary paradise conceived exclusively as a space where you can read calmly.
The only way to access this space is by using the code that the books, borrowed in any library of the city, carry. The book is the key. It is not a metaphor. It is necessary to take it with you, to transport it around the city and to scan the code in the only door on the big wall.
Likewise, the only way to locate the exact place where the garden is located is through the map that is delivered with the borrowed book in the source library, and that serves at the same time as a page separator.
In front of the already established model of open and striking public building, we propose a building wrapped in mystery, which can only be found through a map, and which can only be accessed by carrying a book. Eroticism in front of pornography.
The network of libraries in New York will want a place like that.
And the one in Tokyo.
The movement between neighborhoods is promoted, the neighborhood exchange. The urban exploration.
Is it possible to imagine a different public building, beyond the iconic architecture pattern in which contemporary architecture seems to have stagnated?”




