The Library in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Strasse in West Berlin was designed by Hans Scharoun with substantial participation by Edgar Wisniewski. Construction began in 1967 to house those parts of the library's evacuated holdings from the western Allied occupation zones at the end of World War II. After 11 years of construction, it was finally dedicated by Federal President Walter Scheel and opened to the public in 1978. The library is part of a complex of cultural buildings in Berlin called Kulturforum. Presents a language familiar to the Berlin Philharmonic, also Schauroun work, as opposed to international style exhibited by the Neue Nationalgalerie of Mies van der Rohe. The three buildings comprising the Kulturforum.
Concept
The Library should function as a lock to separate Kulturforum located in West Berlin, the band's death and the wall. For this reason, the outer envelope shows a total silence of the interior. It is a building of enormous scope, complex volumes of over 300 meters in length. Only from a distance you can see the monumental scale of the whole. The mass expands enclosure built on the floor without caring its limits, seems only to domestic laws before entering unknown. Only highlights the coronation with a volume coated copper plates. If you look closely, the building disappears and becomes a topography that blends with the surrounding environment.
Structure
The route to enter the building is quite naturally, an instinctively. The access is quite corner, moved to the left of the axial axis of the front. This shift is creating a concavity on the floor coincides with one of the edges of the coronation. The access shaft is reinforced by two concepts: a singular vertex in the upper area and a hole in the part that comes with the ground. The last meters occur outside invading the concavity created. It is an open-air space that serves to return the building friendly and help you feel comfortable in it.
On the lintel of the door, you can see the size of the entire building, or when viewed from afar. A small canopy protects access and, briefly, all the monumental scale disappears just when it crosses the threshold of the door. From the entrance, once flanked the door, a huge foyer opens suddenly to the eye and suggest different paths. Head, is a staircase wide and comfortable, while on either side, there are two singular. On the right side, the space seems to have no end, is illuminated from behind as the light from the windows of the facade that served as a guide to access from outside. This makes them aware of the location of the space. The lobby on the left is smaller and apprehensive, and is illuminated by a window in the corner with stained glass that focuses the attention first. They are located cloakrooms, lockers, a store counter, toilets and other services required in the access right.
This space is rotated ninety degrees from the initial direction of the route that pointed to the staircase. From there you can see the impressive size of the entire lobby, which extends on the other side. The initial width of this space is, from this point in depth, and the front has a wide perspective depth, but the closure is sufficiently enlightened as to shorten the distance that separates them. The lobby has a total area greater than 5,000 square meters, but two elements are combined to mitigate the perception of space. One is the useful height of the enclosure of six meters, the other is the adoption of a structure of great lights, a pillar for every 150 square feet of roof. Both items will be attuned to the dramatic steps that make up the space, bringing its effect.
Illuminate an enclosure of this size is not a simple matter, especially given that one of the two long walls that surround the area is facing a blind. In the central hall on the right is a rectangular enclosure, anchored to the pavement, which acts as a flashlight and a spreading soft light coming from all around the top floor, which, in turn, has lighting. The rectangle corresponds to a lamp or a piece of furniture cleverly placed on the initial gap, it is airtight and accessible from the lobby where boots, represents a portion of the floor has fallen and can carry light from below, see a small sample of what is the essence of the building. The arrangement of this piece on the hall broke the visual axis transverse oblique that other lost in the Escorza, generates a movement in their environment and subdivided the original space.
The platform of the mezzanine is quite smaller in size than the previous one, but its height is considerably higher, with about ten meters high. The sense of height is dominant over its entire area, being powered by an elongated enclosure. Peripheral two galleries, one over the other, make two lines of the cornice on perimeter walls that invite look up.
The light which comes from the longitudinal and long ornament that corresponds to the rear facade of the building is strong, coming from the west. However double balconies of the cross section acts as brisoleil, avoiding any direct radiation from the sun. The clarity of the new site far exceeds that of the previous hall. There are two effects that qualify for this space in relation to the first volume of air, in height, and amount of light per square meter, both are higher. It arrives here turning right within the meaning of the stairs, to walk along the long hallway that leads to the other end. The visitor can distinguish which is under the golden crown volume work. On this roof plane is located, the deposit of general books. Having reached the end of the hall is another staircase discovered, symmetrically prepared to allow the previous left before resuming the journey to continue to rise.
The floor is elevated from the ground to over 6 meters, with an area greater than 10,000 square meters. The site is about 165 meters long and its width is variable, with an average of 60 meters breadth. With the new staircase leads to the 2 / 3 of the plant. Is here the general reading room, which occupies the lobby area more appropriate to the area of Latin American Studies. The space is almost equivalent to the projection of the entire building. The ceiling of the room is 9 meters tall. The light is absolute and uniform, and comes from the dihedral formed by the roof and facade of the east, that of access. This marks an initial order to the site, the area facing the opposite is the blind, where dock ladders, more or less as it happened with the lobby on the ground floor but the other way around but now everything is bigger and sharper. About this ornament shows two overlapping pathways, as if they were boxes of an audience.
The vast esplanade consists of three levels: central, which is the largest, and two sides that surround it. In the middle is the rectangular hole that descends to the floor to access, one carrying light to the ground floor. The vacuum of the excess is protected by a canopy height of two isolated plants. These platforms, which are equivalent to individual buildings within the mantle of the deck, extending the side wing generating other contiguous areas zoned useful partners to the huge reading room.
In the opposite wing, left, right at the finish of the second staircase, the other side space deals with a single mezzanine. The three sites, although independent, they form a unit under the dazzling daylight. From the attic of one of the wings, you see the vision of space as a whole. A four meters above the floor is found the wall, blind in the lower lobby and along the mezzanine. For the interior strip that have occupied and offer new routes peripherals.
Turning to the opposite end of the floor under the canopy that presides over the great central space there is a staircase leading to the auxiliary two mezzanines, each intermediate landing is carefully placed on a railing all around the space. The second mezzanine is a new point of view, more privileged than their predecessors. From there a gateway communicates with the home side facing the boxes. At the junction starts a new service staircase that leads up to the roof of the building. His step is restricted to in-house staff and access to the deposit of general books. The Boards of lectures and reading up in the form of terrace deposits into windowless, covered with oxidized aluminum plates in gold. This corresponds to the blind facade of the building location in relation to the Wall. At the starting, the service staircase connects the balcony that are longitudinally on the blind side wall thickness and give this ornament has been adjacent to the lobby of the mezzanine.
