The Hansa Library was founded in 1957 at the southern end of the Hansaplatz as one of the public facilities, which provided the Interbau concept for the cultural basic supply of the neighborhood. The erection was transferred to the architect Werner Duttmann, later Berlin city director. He developed an ensemble of low-rise buildings with the subway reception building and the library in concrete frame construction with a deepened goat roof, which between the surrounding, high-striving buildings, have a floor-standing and clearly structured structure.
The edition of the library was designed, an American-style free-lance library with free access shelves and reading areas. In addition to seating, light and openness became the central point of the building task. Duttmann solved this requirement by constructing a square atrium building around a spacious, planted courtyard, framed by four wings of the building, bordering the southeast corner by a water basin, thereby establishing the desired relationship with the Tiergarten green area.
Each wing of the building houses its own function area of the library with places to stay and to go through. The three reading rooms are particularly transparent. Two of them, for adults in the east wing and for young people in the south wing, are glazed on both sides and allow a view into the atrium and surrounding green spaces. The magazine's reading room in the west wing is the area open to all visiting groups, which is intended to reduce the possibility of a threshold crossing before entering a library through a glass wall. This is also the end of the route, which leads visitors directly from the subway to the wide glass door of the main entrance.
The library rooms with clear, clear lines enable a targeted search and individual work. They offer bright workplaces and small reading. The open atmosphere invites you to linger in the light-flooded rooms. A special attraction is the reading garden with smaller trees and low shrubs. Protected under the roof of the atrium walkway or in the open air, visitors can devote themselves entirely to reading. The roomy windows to the garden provide a transparent and friendly feeling in the interior. This creates a smooth transition from the interior of the library to the garden, where the bronze sculpture "Vegetative", created in 1955 by Bernhard Heiliger, offers a special view.
To date, Duttmann's solution to a library enthusiast has attracted professionals and visitors. The building shows its architectural concept of the dissolution of boundaries between interior and exterior as well as different room and mood offerings and anticipates many qualities of the later designed ADK at the Hanseatenweg.
