Eat, Move, Think and Create: A Modular Library That Folds Daily Life into Girona's Reading Rooms

Girona does not need more books. It already has libraries, bookstores and a university feeding a steady stream of readers into the city. What it lacks, according to this proposal, is a place shaped around how residents actually spend their days. Eat, Move, Think and Create starts from that diagnosis and arrives at a clear answer: a library where reading is one activity among many, sharing space with cooking, gardening, working, walking and the casual business of running into neighbours.

Designed by Hanbyul Oh, the project was a Shortlisted entry in BookMark 2020. The site sits close to Girona's old quarter and historic walls, near the University of Girona, on largely flat ground with a slight slope along the road. The surrounding population spans a broad range of ages, and the proposal treats that mix as an opportunity rather than a problem to be solved with separate rooms for separate demographics. Organised around four interconnected themes, the scheme pairs modular construction with flexible programming, using architecture as a framework for relationships rather than a container for collections.

Glass Boxes That Put Reading on Display

The basic unit of the library is a modular room, rendered here as a red shipping container opened up with full glazed walls. Inside, book-lined shelves and simple timber stools create an intimate reading cell, while dappled light falls across the floor. The glass matters more than it first appears. A conventional reading room hides its occupants behind walls; these rooms expose them, turning study into something visible to anyone walking through the building.

The second view makes the point explicitly. A figure passes a potted citrus tree just outside the container, close enough to glance at the shelves and the people reading. This is the lifestyle library at its most legible: books are not withdrawn into a dedicated zone but distributed through a wider ecosystem of social space, where a walk to another activity can turn into a pause to read.

An Atrium Planted Like a Town Square

From above, the organising logic becomes clear. Stacked containers ring a central atrium, and the ground plane between them behaves less like a lobby and more like a public square, with trees, reading tables and a red book pavilion standing among them. Different programmes overlap on this floor, which is exactly what the project wants: encounters that a traditional reading room would never generate.

At eye level, the square becomes a grove. Timber stools and tables gather beneath a fruiting tree, a fern planter softens the edge, and the containers rise behind. The inclusion of edible planting is a quiet nod to the "Eat" theme, suggesting that growing and gathering food can sit alongside reading rather than being banished to a separate café.

Circulation as a Place to Linger

A teal-framed upper walkway overlooks the atrium floor, where a woman pushes a pram past planter beds and trees. The image captures the generational mix the proposal aims for: students from the nearby university and families from the neighbourhood using the same building in the same moment. The flat site and its gentle slope support broad accessibility, and here that accessibility reads as everyday ease rather than code compliance.

Outside, terraced timber steps double as bookshelves and seating on an open deck beside a glazed container corridor. Girona's sunny climate makes this kind of semi-exterior space viable for much of the year, and the design takes full advantage, pushing reading out onto balconies, decks and open circulation. In evening light, with houses and trees beyond, the steps feel as much like a neighbourhood porch as a library fixture.

Colour, Modules and a View Over the Old City

Seen from outside, the stacked containers in pink, green and cream give the building a deliberately informal identity, closer to a cluster of homes than a monumental civic institution. A library window and shelves sit beside a leafy tree, and the modular logic suggests a structure that could be reconfigured as community needs shift.

The final interior shifts the mood. Under a purple corrugated ceiling, low bookshelves and bench seats face a long window over rooftops toward the distance. Given the site's proximity to Girona's old quarter and historic walls, this framed view anchors the playful modular architecture to the city's heritage. It is the "Think" room of the scheme: calmer, slower and oriented outward to the landscape.

Why This Project Matters

Plenty of library proposals claim to be social infrastructure; fewer commit to it at the level of spatial organisation. Hanbyul Oh does so by refusing to rank reading above other activities. Glazed modules, a planted atrium, walkways that overlook shared ground and terraces that serve as shelves all work together so that people who arrive to cook, garden or meet friends inevitably pass through books, and readers inevitably pass through community life.

The project's real lesson lies in its starting question. Instead of asking how a new building can store more books, it asks why anyone would want to spend a whole day there. By answering through climate, views, generational mix and modular flexibility, Eat, Move, Think and Create offers a convincing model for neighbourhood libraries in cities that already have access to knowledge but lack places to share it.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Hanbyul Oh

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Project credits: Eat, Move, Think and Create by Hanbyul Oh BookMark 2020 (uni.xyz).