OUTSIDE: A Girona Library Without Walls, Where Bookcases Stand in the Grass Under One Open Roof

Q: Who wrote "OUTSIDE: A Girona Library Without Walls, Where Bookcases Stand in the Grass Under One Open Roof"?

This article was written by UNI Editorial and published on uni.xyz, a platform for design professionals and creative thinkers.

Q: What is "OUTSIDE: A Girona Library Without Walls, Where Bookcases Stand in the Grass Under One Open Roof" about?

This article covers topics related to Library Architecture, Conceptual Architecture, Exhibition Design. A broad translucent roof shelters bookcases, gardens and a sunken fire pit in Girona, turning the public library into an open civic landscape.

What happens to a library when you take away its walls? OUTSIDE answers by keeping the books, the shelves, the tables and the roof, and letting everything else go. The result is a public library for Girona, Spain, that behaves less like a building and more like a sheltered park: bookcases stand among tall grass, readers sit within sight of the trees, and the boundary between the reading room and the city is a matter of shade rather than masonry.

Designed by Felipe Amorim and Pamela Cipriani for the BookMark 2020 competition, the proposal sets out a clear social ambition. It aims to encourage exchanges between people and the city, to promote the habit of reading, and to support a healthier, more inclusive community life. Instead of enclosing knowledge in a fixed volume, the designers organise reading, conversation, recreation and community programming across an elevated platform under one broad protective roof.

Walkways That Cross the Grass Before They Reach the Shelves

Grated walkway crossing tall dry grass toward yellow bookcase volumes, with a wheelchair user and a man with a cane in soft daylight

Metal grate walkway running between freestanding yellow bookcases and a planted grass bed, with visitors browsing under a light canopy

The first encounter with OUTSIDE is not a doorway; it is a path. Metal grate walkways cut through tall dry grass and lead toward freestanding yellow bookcases, so arrival happens gradually. The project offers access from the west, north and east, which rules out a single monumental entrance. People can approach from whichever direction their daily route takes them and find themselves among the collection almost without noticing the threshold.

The renderings make a deliberate point about who this path is for. A wheelchair user and a man with a cane move along the same level walkway as everyone else, which turns the designers' stated concern with accessibility into visible spatial fact. The grated surface stays flat while the planting continues right up to its edges, so the landscape is part of the library experience rather than something kept at a distance.

A Translucent Grid Roof Doing the Work of an Entire Building

Round wooden tables and orange chairs under a translucent grid roof, with readers moving between timber shelving units toward the trees

With no enclosing walls, the roof carries the full architectural load of defining place. Its translucent grid filters daylight evenly over round wooden tables and orange chairs, while additional light arrives from the open perimeter. Timber shelving units mark out zones without sealing them off, and readers move between them toward the trees at the edge of the platform.

This is the project's central bet: that a roof, furniture and shelving can deliver the recognisable conditions of a library while the rest stays open. The designers describe a deliberate ambiguity between interior and exterior, and the image shows how this works. You are clearly somewhere specific, yet your view and your route are never interrupted. For a reading space this is unusual. Most libraries buy concentration through enclosure; OUTSIDE tries to buy it through shade, light and the steady presence of vegetation.

A Sunken Fire Pit at the Heart of the Collection

Sunken fire pit with a guitar player at the center of a bookshelf-lined room, lit by a square skylight in the roof

The most memorable space in the scheme drops below the platform. A sunken fire pit sits in the middle of a room lined with bookshelves, lit from above by a square skylight cut into the roof. A guitar player at its centre signals the programme: this is a room for gathering, performance and conversation, a counterpart to the quieter study areas elsewhere.

The move reflects the designers' argument that contemporary libraries must host meetings, public debate, informal gatherings and content creation as well as solitary reading. Instead of placing these activities in a separate wing, OUTSIDE puts them at the heart of the collection, surrounded by books. The skylight concentrates attention on the centre, and the lowered floor gives a sense of enclosure that the open platform deliberately avoids. It is the only point where the project pulls inward, which makes it the natural social anchor.

Slender Steel and Long Benches: A Light Frame for Everyday Life

Slender steel columns and a thin canopy over yellow bookcases, with readers seated inside and dry grass in the foreground

Children at a round table and a woman reading on a long timber bench, under a translucent roof with trees behind

Seen from the grass, the structure almost disappears. Slender steel columns support a thin canopy, and the yellow bookcases beneath it become the most visible elements of the composition. This hierarchy is apt for a project that treats architecture as a supporting framework for social interaction rather than a barrier between people and the city. The structure provides shelter and then gets out of the way.

Under that canopy the spaces read as interconnected sectors suited to different ages and tempos. Children gather around a round table while a woman reads on a long timber bench nearby, both beneath the translucent roof with trees behind them. The designers imagine visitors studying beside the garden, attending a virtual presentation, browsing second-hand books, meeting friends or simply passing through. The furniture makes those overlaps feel plausible: the platform has enough variety in seating and grouping to hold several kinds of attention at once.

Why This Project Matters

OUTSIDE takes a question that many library competitions only hint at and pushes it to a conclusion: if the library is now as much a social infrastructure as a storehouse for books, does it still need to be a sealed box? By reducing the building to a roof, a platform, a set of shelves and a carefully placed fire pit, Amorim and Cipriani make reading a public activity, visible to passersby and constantly aware of the city and its changing conditions.

The proposal leaves practical questions open, especially about weather, security and the care of a collection exposed to open edges, and a further iteration would benefit from addressing them directly. Its value lies in the clarity of its position. Level walkways, multiple approaches and a structure that steps back in favour of people give the idea of an inclusive civic library a concrete spatial form. As a provocation, it reminds designers that removing walls can open space for community life rather than weakening the library.