The Flexible Library: Architectural Design for an Adaptable Community Library in Girona

Project by Andra Ratcliffe and Carlyn Schaeffler

Shortlisted entry of BookMark 2020

The Flexible Library proposes a new model of architectural design in which the library is no longer understood simply as a building that stores books. Instead, it becomes an evolving community environment shaped by learning, social interaction, adaptability, and public participation.

Prototyped in Girona, Spain, the project by Andra Ratcliffe and Carlyn Schaeffler was conceived with a broader ambition. Although rooted in a specific urban context, its principles are intended to be adaptable to communities around the world. The proposal was recognized as a Shortlisted entry of BookMark 2020.

At the heart of the project is a fundamental question about the future of libraries. In an era when information can be accessed instantly through digital devices, what role should the physical library continue to play?

The Flexible Library responds by transforming the library into an active social framework. Books remain central, but they are placed within an architectural environment that encourages people to see, meet, discuss, exchange ideas, learn new skills, and participate in the continuous development of their community.

Rethinking Modern Library Architecture

Traditional libraries are often organized around storage, quiet reading rooms, fixed shelving, and clearly separated programs. The Flexible Library challenges that rigid model.

Its architectural design focuses instead on visibility, interaction, and change.

The designers consider the relationship between "doing" and "seeing" particularly important. Books, information resources, activities, and people are visually connected throughout the library. Rather than concealing different functions behind enclosed rooms, the architecture allows activities to become part of the visitor's experience of the building.

Someone arriving simply to read may encounter a workshop, a discussion, a film project, or another form of learning taking place nearby. This visual exposure creates opportunities for curiosity.

The library therefore becomes more than a destination for existing knowledge. It becomes an environment capable of encouraging people to discover something unfamiliar.

Connecting Books, Technology, and People

One of the conceptual foundations of the project is the contrast between the physical weight of books and the perceived lightness of digital technology.

Books are tangible objects. They occupy shelves, create mass, and require physical space. Digital information appears almost weightless by comparison, accessible through screens and devices without a visible physical presence.

The Flexible Library uses this contrast as an architectural idea.

Rather than treating traditional and digital information as opposing systems, the proposal brings them together within a shared spatial experience. The physical collection gives the library substance and identity, while contemporary learning methods introduce flexibility and new possibilities for communication.

This relationship is reflected in the spatial organization and material expression of the building.

The design drawings show a substantial central volume framed by more open peripheral spaces. Bookshelves are integrated into the architectural language rather than treated merely as movable furniture. Openings within this central structure establish visual relationships between different levels and activities, allowing occupants to see others reading, moving, gathering, or learning.

The result is a form of modern library architecture where information becomes both spatial and social.

A Library Designed Around Community

The Flexible Library is envisioned as a community-run library, which significantly influences its architectural approach.

Instead of defining every space and function permanently, the designers provide a framework that the community can adapt over time. Programs, resources, and accessory spaces can evolve according to changing local needs.

This creates a very different relationship between architecture and its occupants.

The building is not considered complete simply when construction ends. Its purpose continues to develop through use.

The community effectively becomes an active participant in the life of the library, determining how resources should expand, which activities should be introduced, and how different spaces can be occupied.

This principle transforms flexibility from an aesthetic idea into an operational strategy.

Flexible Architecture for Changing Needs

Flexibility is one of the defining characteristics of the project.

Rather than designing rooms around highly specific functions, the proposal creates spaces capable of accommodating different uses and varying numbers of occupants. This allows the building to respond to changing educational, cultural, technological, and social demands.

A space used for reading at one moment could support collaborative learning or community activities at another.

This adaptability is essential to the project's ambition of creating a universally applicable library model.

Different cities have different demographics, climates, cultural traditions, educational priorities, and community structures. A library that depends upon one rigid program may therefore be difficult to replicate successfully elsewhere.

The Flexible Library approaches universality differently.

Instead of proposing that every community should receive an identical building, it establishes architectural design principles that can be interpreted according to local requirements.

Adaptability becomes the element that makes the model transferable.

Extending the Library Into Public Space

The relationship between the building and the surrounding city is another important aspect of the proposal.

In the Girona prototype, the northwest corner of the site is conceived as an exterior community space. This area functions simultaneously as public space and as a connector between the street and the library.

The architectural drawings reinforce this relationship.

The exterior community area is shown as a place where different forms of occupation can occur alongside the building. A person might sit with a laptop while others gather or play nearby. These activities do not need to happen within a conventional reading room to belong to the library experience.

By allowing public life to extend across the site, the project reduces the psychological boundary between institution and street.

The library becomes something people can approach, inhabit, and participate in rather than a closed civic building that must be formally entered before it becomes useful.

Inclusivity Through Accessible Public Architecture

Inclusivity is therefore embedded within the spatial strategy.

The designers describe the entire site as a community asset intended to be accessible to everyone. Connecting the public street directly with shared outdoor areas and the internal library creates a gradual transition from city to institution.

This can make the library feel more approachable.

Instead of emphasizing separation, the architecture creates connections between public space, communal areas, information resources, learning spaces, and individual activities.

The concept broadens the meaning of access. Inclusivity is not limited to being able to physically enter the building. It also concerns whether people feel invited to participate in the activities, resources, and social life surrounding it.

Learning Beyond the Bookshelf

The project also recognizes that contemporary libraries increasingly support forms of learning that extend beyond reading.

A film studio learning environment is proposed as one possible complementary program. Its inclusion reflects the designers' observation of a particular opportunity within the community, while also demonstrating how the library could accommodate changing forms of knowledge production.

Film introduces storytelling, technology, visual communication, teamwork, editing, and media literacy into an institution traditionally centered around written information.

It does not replace books.

Instead, it expands the ways in which knowledge can be created and communicated.

This is central to the Flexible Library's evolution from information repository to learning ecosystem.

Materiality and Spatial Identity

The presentation also establishes a restrained material language.

Studies identify stone material, bookcases, and a storefront-style facade as key components of the architectural vocabulary. Their combination reinforces the broader conceptual dialogue between solidity and openness.

Stone suggests permanence, weight, and physical presence, qualities that correspond naturally with the project's interest in books as tangible objects.

The lighter facade conditions and visual openings introduce transparency and connection.

Within the section, a central book-lined volume becomes a strong spatial anchor. Large openings carved into this volume allow occupants to inhabit, overlook, and visually connect with surrounding spaces.

The bookshelves therefore operate at both functional and architectural scales.

They store information while helping define the building itself.

Architecture as a Framework for Social Exchange

The Flexible Library ultimately treats social interaction as an essential component of learning.

Discussion, observation, exchange, and informal encounters are not secondary activities placed around the edges of the library. They form part of its central purpose.

Visual connections between spaces encourage occupants to understand what is happening elsewhere in the building. Shared areas create opportunities for unplanned interaction. Outdoor community space extends those relationships into the public realm.

The library consequently becomes both educational infrastructure and social infrastructure.

It supports individual concentration while acknowledging that knowledge also develops collectively through conversation and experience.

An Evolutionary Model for the Future Library

What makes the project evolutionary is not a futuristic aesthetic or dependence on sophisticated technology.

Its evolution comes from combining familiar principles of the library with a more open understanding of community.

Physical books remain important. So do reading, learning, and access to information.

What changes is the spatial and organizational framework surrounding them.

Connection, discourse, adaptability, technology, media, outdoor activity, and community participation become integrated with the traditional library program.

This combination places the definition of the institution increasingly in the hands of the people it serves.

Rather than prescribing exactly what a library must be, the project establishes the architectural conditions through which a community can continually redefine it.

A Local Prototype With Global Potential

Although developed as a prototype for Girona, Spain, the project's emphasis on flexibility gives it relevance beyond a single location.

The idea is not to reproduce the Girona building identically in different countries. Instead, its principles could inform other forms of community library design.

Flexible spaces could accommodate different programs. Public areas could respond to different urban conditions. Additional learning environments could emerge according to local interests. Collections and resources could grow alongside their communities.

This makes adaptability the project's primary form of universality.

Architecture provides the framework, while people determine how that framework develops.

The Flexible Library and the Future of Architectural Design

The Flexible Library by Andra Ratcliffe and Carlyn Schaeffler offers a compelling interpretation of how architectural design can respond to changes in the way knowledge is accessed, produced, and shared.

Its significance lies in avoiding a simplistic choice between the traditional library and the digital future.

Instead, it connects both.

Books provide physical presence and continuity. Technology expands access and modes of learning. Flexible spaces accommodate change. Visual connections encourage discovery. Public areas establish relationships with the surrounding city. Community participation determines how the institution grows.

As a Shortlisted entry of BookMark 2020, The Flexible Library presents the library not as a static container of information, but as an adaptable civic framework.

Its architecture is deliberately unfinished in one important sense: its ultimate identity depends on the people who inhabit it.

And that may be one of the most relevant ideas for the contemporary library. Rather than asking architecture to predict exactly how people will learn in the future, The Flexible Library creates spaces capable of evolving with them.