Stormen Library

Bodø, Norway

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Stormen Library

Bodø, Norway

Firm

DRDH Architects

Type

Educational › Auditorium Library

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2014

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

$10M - 50M

Photos

David Grandorge (13)

Through an invited international competition in 2009, DRDH was awarded the design of 2 buildings, a new Concert Hall and Theatre, and a new City library for the city of Bodø in northern Norway. Both buildings respond to the particularities of their context, situated between city and landscape, whilst maintaining a familial relationship that creates an urban ensemble. Externally, both façades display a trabeated construction of pre-cast concrete, with an aggregate of local white stone. Forms rhyme between them. Roofs and towers speak to one another and the library establishes a horizon, across which the Concert Hall surveys the dramatic landscape of sea and mountains.

Internally however the buildings offer quite different characters. The principal spaces of the Library describe an open internal
landscape, which focuses upon the main reading space with its glazed elevation to the harbour. The building includes a number of other community and education functions. These include a flexible performance space, a gallery, a multifunction room, media labs and a café. These are defined as a series of rooms that face the city streets. The building is open to both the city and the harbour, with entrances connected by an internal street. The children's library, at the top of the building, is more intimate, nestled beneath an inverted roof form and focused around an external play court.