Library

The Buenos Aires public library is essentially a reinforced concrete structure that resembles a sculpture. The central body, suspended by a set of pillars, sometimes vertical, sometimes slanted, has the shape of an inverted pyramid. The torsion to which the building's structure has been subjected is due to the irregular trapezoidal shape of the library's first floor plan (which adapts to the limits of the land); as opposed to the plan of the upper floor, a perfect square.

Underneath the huge volume in the shape of an inverted pyramid, a space completely facing the city opens up on all four sides. The main entrance is through a volume that encloses the building's vertical accesses, allowing access to the interior of the pyramid, as well as to the technical spaces distributed along an underground floor. Conceptually, these two antagonistic spaces (corresponding to the suspended volume and the open space below) represent a functional division of the library program. It was decided to emphasize an artificial opposition between reading space and book space, which usually appear undifferentiated. This building should be read metaphorically as a library without books.