Parabolas between trees Dornbirn's new municipal library looks like a huge bird's nest. It appears to have "fallen" from somewhere or other into a small park with huge mature trees which, as the aim was to preserve as many of them as possible, are ultimately "to blame" for the building's extravagant form. It is only at first, hasty glance that it appears to be elliptical in plan, in fact the shape is produced by four parabolas that cleverly intersect in order to avoid the trees. The old beaten track across this site on the edge of the inner city was preserved, albeit now integrated in part in the spectacular new architecture.Spon-sored by the Sparkasse (Savings Bank) of the city of Dornbirn to mark its 150th birthday and intended to be a "public living room for inquiring people", the library is conceived as a place of exchange measuring around 1200 m~2, a place for encounters and trans-generational learning. The library, previously housed in the noble old Stieger Villa, had long since outgrown this building and consequently in 2015 the City of Dornbirn set up a two-phase architecture competition for a new building, open to entries from throughout the EU. Barely a year later the joint project from the Vorarlberg offices of Dietrich Untertrifaller and Christian Schmoelz won this competition, against 18 other entries.
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