The ‘2016 Shanghai City Major Cultural Facilities International Young Architects Design Competition’ sought to create three significant new cultural institutions (a museum, a library, and a theatre) as part of the city’s “Five-Year Plan” development model.
Decibel Architecture’s entry (the Shanghai Library East Hall) is an exploration of the library as a custodian of diverse ideas. Exuberant floor plates, informed by axes of site connections and markers, tectonically shift as they rise 9-storeys. A ‘loop of infinite knowledge’ comprised of dual staircases, criss-crosses upwards in the main oculus of the building, and weaves together the disparate programmatic requirements of the brief. Multi-layered veils of iridescent glass provide weather protection, whilst also imbuing an amorphous softness to an otherwise behemoth structure.

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(Urban &#038; Building Form)
Rising 9-storeys, the energetic and shifting form of the New Library Complex creates a harmonic balance across the axis of symmetry with the nearby Shanghai Oriental Art Centre, and an elegant bookend to the Pudong District Government.
As an urban strategy the library complex functions not only as a library in the park, but also brings the park into the building. The complex emerges as a series of landscaped terraces from the park, creating a dialogue between urban areas to the northeast and parks to the southwest.
(Location)
Sitting at the convergence of Century Boulevard local government district, Yuanshen Road commercial &#038; residential district, and Century Park, the location of the New Shanghai Library complex provides the perfect opportunity for a new meeting place for the people of Pudong to share and grow knowledge, respect, and cultural ideas. The architecture is conceived from the underlying principle of a field of energy.
The shapes and shifting lines of the building are the revealed regions of the continuous space within which we all live. Clean, crisp forms gesture outwards to the key precinct directions, conveying the energy of the building and its function out into the greater city, whilst simultaneously presenting soft internally curved frontages that welcome discovery and contemplation.
(Facade &#038; Plaza)
Facade and skins are treated as veils of light – inspired by the Aurora Borealis and acting as light blades that carve and select regions of amorphous space into real programme, floors, and voids. Layers of iridescent coloured glass drape to form a unifying veil around the different functions, circulations, and energetic interactions within the complex.
Created by the collision of electrically charged particles from the sun with gases in the atmosphere, the Aurora are an ethereal, elegant, and delicate expression of high intensity energetic interactions. The layering and overlapping of scalloped glass blur the edges of the building and allow it to flow from the landscape of the park in a way that is simultaneously dramatic and delicate.
The main plaza rises from the street and park levels to create a connecting civic plain which provide perfect conditions for both human interaction and the collision of ideas. Three main entry points into the plaza have been located at the major pedestrian crossings – these lead to a central courtyard which connects all the functions of the complex. Sculpted by the movement paths through the site are four crescent-shaped pods which act as the main entrances to the different functions in the building. The generous spaces between these pods are activated by kiosks and cafes providing alternative opportunities for people to meet and interact. Inspired by the diagram of particle collisions the interior circulation and navigation create opportunities for the unknown to be created and encountered within these mixed programmes.
(Key Programme)
The key programme functions of Library (Resource Display &#038; International Cultural Space), Exhibition (Special Research &#038; Innovation Experience Space), Academic Exchange, and Research Space are all given their own specific landing place and entry at the ground plane. Entrance at these points guides visitors through a vertical tapestry of function and related connections.
(Access)
Access to each level, from ground to roof, is supported and enticed to the central Lorenz Attractor – the focus of balanced and dynamic forces engaging the public in a journey of discovery. Interspersed between the cultural functions across different levels of the complex are restaurants, bars and kiosks which activate these terraced parks day and night. The terraces also provide an opportunity for community activities such as Tai Chi, chess, and relaxation. At the heart of the library complex is an oval-shaped courtyard which is inscribed with a step-ramp forming a looping infinity symbol.
This is inspired by the Lorenz Attractor which is a mathematical model describing chaos theory’s sensitive dependence on initial conditions. While there is an underlying beauty and elegance in the meandering path generated by the equation, it is by its nature an expression of deterministic chaos as fluids move and trajectories are formed and moulded by the minutely random conditions around them. It represents the capacity of innate organisation and cohesion, despite a recognition of individual, unique pathways of life, learning and creation.
Taking the Lorenz Attractor as metaphor we have explored this idea as a path connecting the various functions of the programme across and between levels. The fluid nature of the step ramp draws your view up through the building to the sky.
The sinuous and generous proportions of the ramp make it an attractive path providing infinite possibilities for interactions between people as they move between departments. It will be a central meeting place and catalyst for the cross fertilization of knowledge and exchange of ideas.