INTERFACE: A Fragmented Library Woven into Warsaw's Urban Fabric

What happens when you stop thinking of a library as a building and start treating it as a system? INTERFACE answers that question by shattering the centralized knowledge repository into a constellation of folded volumes, sunken courtyards, and continuous landscapes. The result is a library without a singular front door, one that absorbs the city around it and turns every surface into an opportunity for information exchange, gathering, or quiet retreat.

Designed by Pelin Alemdar, Zeynep Akdemir, and Elif, this shortlisted entry for Libgen 2019 takes Warsaw as its testing ground. The designers analyzed the city through three lenses: its urban spaces, volumetric density, and green zones. Those readings became the generative logic for a decentralized, plug-in architecture that rejects the monolithic library typology in favor of spatial diversity and programmatic adaptability.

Folded Volumes in a Green Field

From the aerial view, the project reads as a series of angular, folded roof volumes scattered across a generous green landscape. These are not random placements. Each fragment corresponds to a specific program: interactive learning zones, cine-vision spaces, outdoor gathering areas, and hidden retreats for reflection. The site plan reveals how sectional logic governs the layout, with programmatic zones interlocking with landscape elements rather than sitting on top of them. Trees, pathways, and open ground are not leftover space; they are active participants in the library's operation.

The fragmentation strategy draws directly from the Warsaw site analysis. By mapping the city's volumetric density and green corridors, the designers arrived at a spatial distribution where built form and landscape share equal weight. The fragmented surfaces are bent, buried, and stretched to accommodate a range of public uses, transforming the library from a singular building into a multi-dimensional civic infrastructure.

Glazed Canopies and the Threshold Between Inside and Out

One of the project's most evocative moments occurs beneath the glazed roof structure, where pedestrians move through a space that is neither fully interior nor fully exterior. At dusk, the canopy catches the last light while trees stand within the covered zone, collapsing any clean boundary between architecture and landscape. The rendering captures a critical ambition of the project: access to information should not be confined within walls. Open-air amphitheaters, exhibition pathways, and continuous green grounds extend the library's reach into the public realm, making the entire environment a surface for learning and community interaction.

Below the Plaza: Sunken Courtyards as Quiet Infrastructure

The cutaway view reveals a layer of the project that the aerial perspective hides. Beneath the main plaza level, a sunken courtyard creates a sheltered, introspective space. Silhouetted figures move through it, suggesting a slower pace of occupation, a retreat from the open landscape above. This vertical layering is key to the project's claim of spatial diversity: the same site supports extroverted public gathering at grade and contemplative, focused interaction below. The library becomes an ecosystem where the mode of engagement shifts with every change in elevation.

Sectional Logic: Three Variations of the Fold

The final set of drawings lays bare the structural and spatial logic behind the folded roof volumes. Three sectional variations are presented alongside corresponding site plans, showing how the same formal language adapts to different programmatic demands. Some volumes rise steeply to create tall interior spaces; others fold low and hug the ground, forming covered pathways or semi-enclosed reading zones. The consistency of the folding vocabulary provides coherence across the fragments, while the variations ensure that each piece responds to its specific role in the network. It is a catalog of architectural moves rather than a single gesture.

Why This Project Matters

INTERFACE takes seriously the idea that digital ubiquity has changed what a library needs to be. Rather than designing a container for books and adding a computer room, the team proposes a fundamentally different organizational model. The library becomes a decentralized system where printed material, digital devices, and human knowledge coexist across a network of interconnected spaces. The architecture does not privilege one mode of learning over another; it builds a framework flexible enough to support all of them simultaneously.

What makes the project compelling beyond its concept is the rigor of its site reading. The fragmentation is not arbitrary. It is derived from Warsaw's own spatial DNA: its densities, its voids, its green infrastructure. By grounding an ambitious typological experiment in specific urban conditions, Pelin Alemdar, Zeynep Akdemir, and Elif demonstrate that reimagining the library does not require abandoning context. It requires reading it more carefully.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Pelin Alemdar, Zeynep Akdemir, Elif

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Project credits: Interface by Pelin Alemdar, Zeynep Akdemir, Elif Libgen 2019 (uni.xyz).