It feels like that there is an underlying principle.
I hope this building seems so simple that people feel like going into it.
There is even a sense of mystery.
The moment you walk in, you will feel
moved by something.
When designing this building,
we happened to see a picture by Andrew Wyeth in a book on my desk.
In the picture, there was an old man sitting on the rocks,
and waves were in the distance.
The picture gave off a sort of loneliness, an unshakable feeling.
And this sense of loneliness had something in common with
the subtle sense we were looking to bring to the design.
It’s a roughly 450 square meter library,
Upon entering there’s a small space with a low access,
which leads you to a two-storey high reading room,
And the reading room is the theme space of this building.
The whole library is ladder-shaped
because we hope that people sitting in the back
will not be distracted by people sitting in the front.
So this design means that nobody will block your view.
That way, everyone is free to look at the same sea.
If considering this reading room as an auditorium,
then the sea is the ongoing play.
And this metaphor is an underlying theme of this space.
On the top of the roof, we have
an array of light openings.
Actually they are also air vents.
One or two hours before and after three o’clock every afternoon,
small light spots will get through the openings,
bringing into the space a sense of living,
as if the space is breathing.
Light creates atmosphere.
And we hope to
reveal the completeness of light
in the space of this building
There is a meditation room right next to the reading room
Which provides individuals
a corner for thinking or spacing out.
Every day, this space remains dark
for most of the time.
And only at a unique time during the day,
the light will get through that narrow cranny into the space.
When we talk about light,
we can’t avoid the theme of brightness and darkness
and how light moves,
like how two dancers tell a story.
Detached from the previous two spaces,
is an activity room,
isolated by an outdoor terrace.
The activity room features with two major light sources.
In the morning, you get the warm light from the east
and the cold light from the west.
But it is reversed in the afternoon
which means that the warm light comes directly from the west,
while the cold light reflects from the east.
The state of life that we hope to achieve is that
anyone staying on the seashore
has a space where they can feel their relationship with the sea,
while holding a book.