1 Entrance 2 Foyer 3 Café 4 Escalators 5 Ticket sales 6 Library shop 7 Audience toilets 8 Restaurant 9 Multi-function hall 10 Kitchen 11 Secondary entrance 12 Passage 13 Service booth 14 Course hall
ilding ing
15 Reception 16 Office 17 Catalogue room 18 Audio room 19 Sound/video facilities 20 External stairs 21 Harbor 22 Existing Hansen Building 23 Existing Holm Building 24 Christians Brygge Road
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Ground floor
New plaza with a stairway of azobé wood leading to the water | Detail of structural glazed wall | View towards the waterfront of the “Black Diamond” and the “Fish”
These issues were not resolved by the 1968 P reben Hansen refurbishment, an extension ill received for its concealment of the brick facade of the original building. The proposal by Schmidt Hammer Lassen was selected for its creation of “a new building that appears as an independent work of architecture which through its masterly connection with the library, both separates itself from it while at the same time giving it prominence.” (Source: “Udvidelsen af det Kongelige Bibliotek“) Addressing civic and urban issues through a new presence on the waterfront, one salient aspect of the Black Diamond project is the integration of the old library with the new building across
the four-lane Christians Brygge Road. This process was initiated by the recognition of the formal procession on the east-west axis that begins in the historic library courtyard. This axis, on which the existing Holms entrance is located, becomes the primary axis of the new building. It culminates in a grand atrium with a spectacular view of the water through an enormous glass structure piercing the black mass of the library. On the exterior, the extension of the new vocabulary of black granite and glass to the facades of the Hansen addition across the Christians Brygge Road further unites the old and the new buildings. This gesture is enhanced by the assimilation of the thoroughfare through the addition
of three glass bridges, high above the road, that connect the two buildings. Vehicles seemingly drive through the library complex. The entrance of the new library on the south facade establishes a new north-south axis para lleling the waterfront. This sequence compri ses a series of public and civic spaces that include a restaurant, a café, a bookstore, public restrooms, an exhibition gallery, an auditorium and the atrium/entrance to the library itself. This new axis intersects the east-west axis at the atrium and concludes on the north side in a low white building, nicknamed the “Fish”, which houses four related research institutions.
DET KONGELIGE BIBLIOTEK 123