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Architects: Wang Weijen Architecture
- Area: 21801 m²
- Year: 2017
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Photographs:Chao Zhang, Wade Zimmerman
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Lead Architect: Weijen Wang
Text description provided by the architects. The library design for the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Shenzhen Campus reconsiders the typical university library in China by breaking the six-story volume into two three-story C-shape volumes, stacked and re-oriented to connects with the adjacent landscape.
The library building extends the campus’s green mall into its atrium, creating a direct visual connection between the campus and the hill behind the building.
The library’s six-story atrium is surrounded by bookshelves and filled with reflected natural daylight. The atrium space extends vertically through the building and laterally connects different reading and study spaces.
The horizontal volumes capture the surrounding landscape into the building, bringing a sense of naturalness into the densely packed shelving areas.
The skylights filter natural daylight into the center of the library, creating a warm and reader-friendly environment for reading and study.
From the exterior, the library building extends to connect with the adjacent student center, teaching complex and sunken garden, creating a learning hub for knowledge exchange among students.
The use of material integrates local brick-laying techniques and with a glazing-aluminum curtainwall system. The exterior curvatures of the library building are designed in relation to the turning-and-meandering experience inside, creating a sense of discovery between the built and the natural, and between the vertical and the horizontal.
