Design Contest, Shared 2nd Prize

Concept and text: Péter Gereben, Balázs Marián

The building of the new library and information centre as well as its environment make up a complex joining the fabric of the town in an organic way as an open public institution. Its interiors and exterior spatial links have the potentials to create communities, whilst it also defines its wider context, represents and enhances local values, and is able to form and shape local identity. The new roofed and closed or open communal spaces created in the heart of the town offer the outstanding institutions and facilities of the town the chance to have their well-deserved place, which due to its location also functions as a meeting point to fulfill alternative requirements that are not directly linked to the institutions. Thus the café opening onto the public square of the town, exhibition rooms on the street level, the auditoriums directly linked to the aula guarantee conditions for various uses and co-existence for every age group. The integration of the building and its environment, their organic channelling into the circulation of the town itself brought about new live communal spaces in the very heart of the town which formally and informally associate with books, reading and knowledge (as it can easily address the younger generations): that is our common culture.