NL architects

NUKII | National and University Library . Ljubljana

NL architects

Ljubljana is a truly unique place; in a way it could be straight from Italo Calvino's Le citta invisibili. It is a fascinating thought that another invisible city is actually underlying it...

Ljubljana has formulated an intriguing opportunity by aiming to build the new library on top of the remains of the former Roman town Emona. It seems a rather counter-intuitive superposition. Could that really work?
Starting point of the proposal is the ancient Roman Crossing. A small fragment of the public space of former Emona, framed by the site boundary, has been extruded to accommodate the entire program: Cardo and Decumanus maximus!
What used to be void now becomes mass and vice versa: Rachel Whiteread-like 'urban inversion'. Former street becomes building, but a building with the character of public space...

The public floors are connected by stairs over the full width. The stairs double as chairs. They form a continuous but differentiated interior space, to meet, relax, read, study, create, communicate, to think. The floors are articulated in the facade, an X-Ray of the internal organization.

architects: NL architects, pieter bannenberg, walter van dijk, kamiel klaasse
team: genyamamoto with arminas sadzevicius, milda naujalyte, and matthew davis, giulia pastore, adrien mans
with: yong cui, michal krejcik, michaela dlouha and zhongnan lao, yinglin cao