the spine, the heart and the belly The spine of this building establishes a continuous pedestrian zone at the ground level. Through its progression, the spine’s relationship with the river changes, widening and narrowing to accommodate program and paths along, above and through it. In addition to the support it provides in making all the library’s elements possible, the spine works principally to invite the city in, which in turn leads it to the heart of the library. The centre the building, where all the axes converge and draw the city in, is the heart of the library: the social centre, entrance and gateway to all the other parts. It houses the main reference desk, computer stations, magazines and newspapers, music archives, a children’s collection, a variety of lounge spaces and at the very top, a reading room. The heart’s open central public space with a stepped forecourt mirrors the Vjecnica — the old and the new reading rooms call to each other over the river. The program is arranged in a series of hanging platforms, each bearing a visual relationship to either the stacks, the city, Vjecnica or back onto itself. The heart is the main shared space of the building staging interaction and dialogue. The stacks act as the underbelly of the library, sunk into the ground by the weight of the books they house. Nested in the deepest layer of the stacks is the library’s most valuable asset — the special collection — consoled by the depths of the earth, indifferent to the outside world. The stacks are delineated by a cut in the ground, which allows for light but no view to or from the outside. Burying the books allows a form of mourning and commemorates that which has been lost. The weight of the collections supports, above ground, an open civic space that promotes a new beginning. Preserving or at least acknowledging the history of Bosnia’s ethnic and religious heterogeneity by affirming what Vjecnica and the city itself contained not so long ago demands a halt to further disintegration on the basis of religion. This project recognizes the impossibility of an ‘answer’ that can reconcile, overcome the losses, or dismiss the suffering of war. It does, however, speak of the possible affirmative role that architecture and knowledge can play through the engagement of collective shared space, in creating the possibility of an overlap. C ´ ´ ´
Lejla Odobasic has recently received her Masters of Architecture from the University of Waterloo. She is currently part of the adjunct faculty at the U of W School of Architecture Rome campus.
44 On Site review 22: WAR
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