UNA2 Studio | ROS Public Library | Pier Luigi Feltri | Terra Viva Visiting Professor 11.07.2015
"ROS" Public Library (2014), Rosignano Marittimo (LI)
"UNA2 Architects Associated" is a recently founded architectural studio, established in 2006 in Genoa by Paola Arbocò, Pierluigi Feltri and Maurizio Vallino, previously founders of "5 + 1 architects associated". They designed and built offices, public buildings, hospitals, public squares and open spaces, museums, archaeological sites, sports facilities, schools and residential buildings. Their work has been published in major Italian and foreign magazines and exhibited in Italy and abroad.
Interior View - Reading Room
The new public library is not enclosed in a single building, but by the covered street that runs through it, the bar and the garden, the library is completly integrated inside the urban fabric. The building does not express representativeness in the shape of its architecture, its symbolic value is in the way it relates to the environment and to the context.
Ventilation Chimneys
At the urban scale the architecture is hidden by the green, the only elements that emerge are the ventilation chimneys, colored prisms with just simple deformations. The library is a symbol in itself: a symbol of knowledge, of the intelligent use of resources; a kind of monument to the culture of sustainability and respect for the environment, which here is accomplished through the laminated wood structure, the infill in straw bales, the exploitation of natural ventilation systems. Efficiency and sustainability are the keywords of the entire project.
Construction Technique - Straw Bales
The reader is at the center of the space: the library is designed with the purpose to be a place where it's possible to read and consult sources (sounds, videos, books, etc...) in a pleasant way, not necessarily with the traditional approach table-chair, but in informal spaces and with comfortable seats (armchairs, sofas, chaises longues) in the cafeteria, along the street, in the garden.
External Facade