We imagine a water park for the public space in front of the library, a fully public and programmed piece of domesticated waterscape, situated in between the station square and the opera slopes.
This public sequence is connected through a device that starts as an underpass at the arches of the new railway station extension to end up in the water park and to continue as a bridge towards the terrace in front of the opera.
The same lecture of the site as a step stone between existing and new city allows for a full shopping program next to the library; in fact the best and only appropriate allocation for a department store in all Bjorvika.
Three basic, different volumes are set one next to the other. A transparent sphere, sitting on the water surface, is intersected by a standing and hermetic slab volume that closes off the waterscape. Together they form the library, the slab being a huge book stack that liberates the floors in the sphere from a books dominated order and allowing free floors for the library. The sphere opens up to all sides and directly addresses the library activity inside towards the surrounding streets.
The third volume is a massive floating box for the shopping building, with two gallery spaces carved out on street level, and with a void sphere cut out as an atrium inside it. This second sphere is visible as a big circular window on the north side, and as a skylight on top.
The composition out of basic forms allows for a well-tempered independence for the library, in relation to the strong identity of the opera building and the new extensions of the railway station.
On the site, a maximum of surface is claimed for a public park, made out of water in all its different forms. The park is the ultimate mediator between the city and the fjord; it faces both the Havnepromenaden and the square in front of the station. Through the park, an intense mixture of sports and wellness are brought into the public realm. The orthogonal layout is generated essentially from a large number of possible activities related to water, resulting in a catalogue of different appearances of the water and of its surface : from waves to warm water jets, from ice surfaces to a massive steam column. The waterscape is further organised through scattered mineral elements on different levels : a rock, an amphitheatre, an island, some sunken patios and an access platform to the library.....more
