According to the building plan made after an analysis on the surrounding areas, a main square dominates two separated land parcels and responds to the main direction, from which people are coming from. The size of the buildings on two land parcels is carefully adjusted to avoid all possible impacts upon the neighboring architecture. The two buildings distinguish themselves with different scale and functions: the main hall in the east has a more convenient location on the campus and is installed with reading rooms, stack rooms as well as corresponding offices and logistical spaces. The eastern land lot is comparably more quiet and therefore supports the digital reading rooms, periodicals reading rooms and a communication center.
The façade of the building characterizes itself with special designed window shades, which imitate the form of book pages. Some of them are turned outwards, revealing the important internal public spaces and practicing the idea of “reading through a book”.
With regards to the concepts, this building plan is based upon human concerns, economical efficiency and ecology. It optimizes the characteristics of a library building, emphasizes three designing concepts, that is, functional flexibility, using comfort and passive energy saving, and translates them into practice by designs on the surface, courtyard, planes and linear structures.
Lighting is one of the most significant factors in this design and the architectural surface plays an import part in achieving that. The wall surface not only fulfills the lighting requirements for the library but more importantly, it combines the architectural functions with the passive energy saving concept. The façades in four directions adopt respectively different designs in respond to different lighting conditions, integrating different perspectives such as function, lighting, sight and energy saving.
The courtyard in the centre not only brings in more natural lighting for the building but also provides conditions for the realization of the energy-saving design. Combined with the passive house concept, the building plan is a manifestation of concerns on lighting, fenestration, heating and air controlling, making itself a feasible and efficient energy-saving proposal.
The ground plan and flow designs follow the three designing concepts mentioned above: it allocates functions according to various lighting conditions and sets up independent streamlines and entrances for different user groups, by which some of the functions can be accessed when the building is closed. The heating zone and cooling zone are located rationally, thus reducing the energy cost.
The space enclosed by the base and the periphery lands are lacking in definition and serve ambiguous purposes, which makes them possess a low rate of utilization but also a huge potential to be reformed. In the design, a strategy of partition is employed and functions are determined by different special scale. Before the main entrance is a square situated, which acts as a assembling and distributing space and location for collective activities. Among dormitories in the residential area and around the square are small-scale spaces, which are suitable for daily activities for students. Moreover, the concept “sponge city” is also introduced into the design to maximize the resistance ability of the building against the water logging.