This final-year project sets out to show that the meaning of the building in its context is the basis for high-grade architecture. The project begins by questing for the identity of the place, and the place of the book.

As a public building the municipal library must act as a signal in the town, monumental and heavy like the libraries of the past. But the modern building should know its place in the old town centre. The genius loci needs to be understood so that the design, itself matter-of-fact and subdued, can express the character on site.

Valuable books should not be left lying around the street and should be given an 'indoors' in the urban structure. Here the books are collected in one large stack, a block set in the inner courtyard. The book stack is a spacious generic structure of walls of books fifteen metres tall amongst which one can wander for hours. In cavities at the rear of the book walls are delivery machines that can retrieve from the stack every book ordered through the Internet.

The enclosure has a specific rhythm in its form and programme that embeds the library in its site. The library volumes contain study rooms, multimedia facilities and offices. Beneath the stack is the communal reading room. Book stack and enclosure are inextricably bound together. The alternation of mass and void and the hollowed condition of the masses themselves generates a sequence of collective and individual spaces. The formal grammar is muted. Architecture is born of the 'rightness' of the building in its context, allowing both the books and the old town to carry on as before.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Specialization: architectuur
Tutors: Christian Kieckens, Hüsnü Yegenoglu, Sjef van Hoof & John Swagten