Usera Public Library

Ábalos & Herreros (2)
Involved architects (1)
Ábalos & Herreros
Iñaki Ábalos Vázquez
Juan Herreros Guerra
Involved architects
Ángel Jaramillo

A library of the characteristics of the one to be built in Usera is no longer recognisable as a large room, nor as a gigantic warehouse or container of books: it is a sum of differentiated services that tend to be increasingly external. How to make such a building meaningful, institutional? How to make it fulfil its true purpose of being a "public" building?

View gallery

Enjoying, as is the case here, a unique position, with magnificent views over the west of Madrid, in the centre of an endowment plot and in the vicinity of the Municipal Council, it is difficult to fall into the immediate temptation of reducing the scale of the project by taking advantage of the unevenness of the plot to try out terraced or semi-buried solutions. With this organisation, neither the views nor the public character of libraries can be served, nor, above all, the balance of the entire site, which would tend to remain polarised around the Municipal Council building, shrinking the investment, both political and economic, involved in the construction of the library.

Bleda y Rosa

What then could be the image and organisation of a modern-day library? How can the site be used to make the most of its topographical conditions? These are the two questions to which our project aims to provide a clear and efficient response, and it wants to do so with the utmost frugality, with a special taste for the emotion produced by simplification. Given that the library programme is made up of a set of medium-sized, autonomous pieces of similar importance, and in a situation in which the landscape and institutional aspects have an important weight, it is reasonable to think about the possibilities opened up by a vertical organisation of the programme, not only in functional terms.

Bleda y Rosa

General information

Usera Public Library

YEAR

2002

Status

Built

Option to visit

Free visit

Address

Ave. Rafaela Ybarra 28026, 43

28026 Madrid - Madrid

Latitude: 40.381943862

Longitude: -3.710609583

Classification

Built area

501 - 5000 m²

Awards

ACUE 2003

VII BEAU

Involved architects

Ángel Jaramillo

Iñaki Ábalos Vázquez

Juan Herreros Guerra

Collaborators

Peter Halley (Contributing artist)

Juan Gómez (Structures)

Rocío Rein (Project Team)

José Cruz (Installations)

Pedro Blanco (Installations)

Pablo Puertas (Project Team)

José Manuel Sierra (Structures)

Miguel Kreisler (Project Team)

Involved architectural firms

Ábalos & Herreros

Information provided by

estudio Herreros

Website links

Ábalos + Sentkiewicz

estudio Herreros

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Location

40.381943862 -3.710609583 6bad9619-644a-43cf-8b8e-001f2ddda2b8 Built
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Built
Temporary
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Unbuilt project

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