Eun Young Yi may be a welcome discovery to many

摘要

One of the many images conjured up by Eun Young Yi at his London lecture, part of GEZE's (of door and windows systems fame) 150th anniversary shindig, was of libraries being like little Noah's Arks. 'Even if the whole world collapses, if just one library survives, the world's knowledge can continue,'Yi said. Relatively unknown in the UK, Eun Young Yi is a Korean-born architect practising in Germany. He designed Stuttgart's controversial new library, a large monolith built on land made available by the reorganisation of the city's S-and U-Bahn systems. It's an imposing building. A concrete frame articulates a facade of nine by nine bays, each window framed by frosted glass bricks, with an entrance on each identical side. A four-storey atrium, lit by a square oculus, sits beneath reading areas organised round a series of ramps, which take the visitor through the remaining five storeys.