Mexico-based firm REC Arquitectura has designed the Central Library in Morelos, Mexico.

+ Project description by REC Arquitectura

The building complex is conceived in sub elements, each element rationally positioned and connected to one another with three generating ideas: culture, cultivation and domesticity.

Central Library, render courtesy REC Arquitectura

The wagons:
Volumes dedicated to book collection and reading rooms with clean circulations, but above all with close proximity between books and reading tables, echoing the way it occurs at home and its domesticity in having things within close reach.  The building structure is flexible for additions, modifications or reproductions within the same site or serving as models for different places inside or outside the university campus.

The “L” Building:
This volume serves as boundary for the central space and contains administrative, public and service spaces such as: multi-purpose rooms, videotheque, hemerotheque, auditorium for 143 people, theses, computer and meeting rooms, cubicles, chief of services, private collections, restrooms, book storage, machinery room, clean water cistern and rainwater cistern.

Lobby/Vestibule:
The double high space performs different functions and the resulting form is entirely rational.   The main access features a 5.6m glass curtain with a concave silhouette designed to protect the space from isolation, likewise, columns and different structural elements are projected towards the exterior in order to work as brise – soleil. Inside, the building’s main facade works as a canvas to deploy a timeline in which historical facts are xerographied within the architecture; divided vertically in modules of 1.2 meters width to show chronologically key moments in history from 1500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.; and horizontally in learning areas, looking for a recreational strategy to interrelate important events in history in a holistic context.

Central Library, render courtesy REC Arquitectura

Central Patio/Central Courtyard:
The central patio with a raindrop shape offers, aside from natural light and ventilation, a triple function of the building with its context; first, it seems like an interior street that ends with a natural mound in the exterior, second, if observed from the wagons, the building is perceived as if the viewer were on the outside, and finally, when the visitor is located at the last wagon towards the main access, the central patio seems confined with a local tree species called “gold rain”, this is the way in which the same volume allows the viewer, depending on his position, to experience a street, a building from the outside and a central courtyard.

Agriculture:
This action embraces self resources, society and education; instead of proposing landscape design and gardening which would eventually need future budget for maintenance, the library landscape strategy is focused on partnering with the faculty of agriculture to surround the building context with orchards and vegetable gardens, interrelating the library socially with another university faculty and allowing the faculty of agriculture to gather and concentrate its land needs while creating synergy within more areas of knowledge.

Central Library - Lighting diagram, drawing courtesy REC Arquitectura

Light:
The lighting strategy was based on the idea of light bouncing in one or two surfaces at least, this effect would generate a different light intensity in the interior; for example, in the wagons, the three skylights would received different illumination since the way they are place embrace light from the dawn to light from the dusk.  The skylight of one of the wagons was oriented towards the north in order to have homogeneous natural light, in the double high stairs and multipurpose rooms, the roof walls were conically shaped in order to look for zenital light; finally, there was left a gap between the double high space ceiling and the elongated bar in order to take advantage of the 12pm light bouncing against a orange surface to provide warmth light at noon.

Central Library - Floor plans, drawing courtesy REC Arquitectura

+ Project credits / data

Project: Central Library, UAEM
Location: Av. Universidad No. 1001, col. Chamilpa, Cuernavaca, Morelos. c.p.62209
Year: 2010 (project), 2011 (Under Construction)
Construction: 3,630 m2
Team: Gustavo Lira, Ivan Garcia, Ulises Rodriguez, Alejandro Albarran, Daniel Ceceña, Maria J. Jimenez, Ivan Recoder y Gerardo Recoder
Typology: Culture | Library