Those who have seen Schmidt Hammer Lassen's significant other completed UK building might be surprised by Aberdeen University Library. This one appears as a box, unlike the staggered cantilevers of the practice's City of Westminster College in London. But step inside and you can see sectional playfulness in its full glory with a twisting atrium gradually diminishing as it ascends to the seventh floor - accentuating the perspective, as Schmidt Hammer Lassen's founding partner Morten Schmidt points out. It gives the building the unexpected fillip of transcendence. The device, visible in Schmidt's early sketches, has borrowed the cathedral sensation of drawing the eye upwards toward eternity.'There is a deep sense of something bigger, something spiritual/he says. The stream of keen weekday morning students doesn't seem to even pause for breath at the sight; although coach groups have been coming in to wonder, taking advantage of the open access ground floor.
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