Library Design: British Architects Unveil State-Of-The-Art Arctic Library in Norway
From The Guardian:
It’s an unusual view to behold from a municipal library. The midday sun hangs just above the horizon, casting a heavenly glow across the water, beneath a sky streaked with pink, orange and blue. A foreground of fishing huts and boats armed with whaling harpoons completes the picture, which could come straight from a Visit Norway tourist brochure.
But this is an unlikely project: a new £110m library [Stormen bibliotek] and concert hall in the Arctic town of Bodø (population 50,000), designed by a small London practice whose most substantial built work prior to winning the contract was an office extension in Sheffield.
“It was quite a leap in scale, for us and the town,” says David Howarth, director of DRDH architects, which won the project in a competition in 2009. “It was a stark contrast to be working on this in the UK, just as libraries were being closed by the dozen and procurement processes make it impossible for small practices to win work of this size.”
Read the Complete Article
Where is Bodø, Norway? (via Google Maps)
See Also: Library’s Web Site (Norwegian) ||| Library’s Web Site in English (via Google Translate)
Video Tour of the New Library
Note: Narration in Norwegian
Velkommen til Stormen bibliotek from Bodø kommune on Vimeo.
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.