Jeremy Huelin
Architecture

The brief asked for the burnt remains of a site lying in the shadow of Rome's ancient city walls to be reactivated and stitched into the urban fabric with a public-oriented program. By reclaiming the little used street as a public park (a model for future urban intervention along the Aurelian wall, creating a green belt around the old city) and adding a subway exit from the San Giovanni Station, the sunken piazza of the proposed building becomes an urban spine which flows from the subway into Esquilino.

Through a play of mass and void, a series of volumes carefully formed in response to the context are complemented by delicately suspended catwalks which offer reprieve from the bustle of the city, ushering the curious traveler up into a cavern of books, a public library. This ascent to heaven requires navigation between private, sunlit reading rooms, secluded niches richly clad in dark oak, and the more austere public atrium with its earthen rammed concrete walls and masses of commuters. The paths culminate in a rooftop terrace which overlooks the wall, formed by large cellular planters which allow dappled sunlight into the space below.