King Roselli Architects – Expansion of the Pontifical Lateran University Library – Rome

The intervention, for the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, responds to the program desired by Monsignor Fisichella, the client: a solid square by insisting on the ground and that, at the top, seems to come off in suspended floors, such as floating and raising of “recordings” of light oblique.

The configuration of the prospectus stands with character and aesthetics of their King-Rosselli, from paginated volumes of the existing campus. The compositional and aesthetic features of the density brick trimmed with finality, in its channel space, from glass diagonal planes, where the brick, and contextualization citation says the link with the existing buildings.

As always the theme of the library, a place of knowledge and “container” of knowledge of the matter, lends itself as one of the most challenging issues for the architecture and design, Jeremy King and Riccardo Roselli, enthusiastically thematize the relationship between protection and accessibility inherent with the library project, and which, at the same time, participates in the present world and loses himself to “protect” property outside any time and carriers of knowledge.

King and Roselli give life to a project that is worthy of being part of the international result of experience gained through years of hard work and commitment in various urban settings, but with dedication and attention to architectural character typical of Italian grammar, in form and materiality of the brick.

The stereometry volume, with its new reading rooms and archive, “hinged”, like the heart, the whole complex, highlighting the portal of entry lytic restored in the 90s – and the large volume of the House Magna clearly distinguished by the presence of travertine facade, containing an auditorium-which is also being restructured by King and Roselli.

The Library, tries to be timeless and enduring place in the language of architecture and space inherent light, as well as the Laurentian library, for example, preserving not only the valuable collections of ancient books and manuscripts – more than 600.000 pieces – but also offers the visitor parking spaces renovated, study and consultation.

The body of the new construction joins the existing without determining “fractures”, thanks to a series of openings that combine the windows, once facing outwards, with the openings of the internal “book tower”.

Crossing a continuous path the construction houses in fact, inside, the archive-filing. Designed as a “tower” on six levels, the internal surfaces of this box in the box are lined with bookcases magazine, while the thickness of the thin slab transforms into one impressive bookshelf.

The spatial detail that makes it unique and constructive intervention, of course, the continuous spiral ramp that folded in the attic from the ground floor is “unrolled” to reach the horizontal closed higher. This is the idea of space that deforms (conform) to become a journey, an ascent, a promenade: a contemporary reflection of the prism traversed by a surface “folding” to merge overlapping slabs. Reducing it by extreme expressions, available in many international examples of contemporary architecture, the Roman context of the Mediterranean character, just through the use of materials, forms the bridge between past and present.

The exterior finish of brick and light shades looking smooth, the same building of the University, mahogany decks on ramps for the paper and read the path upward in the succession of steps, the metal plates of the ceiling of the ramp faceted that reflect light, are unequivocal aspects of contemporary culture.

An absolute place, a room for the man who dominates the gravity by controlling the light through its timely appearance.