Navy Central Library

A library for the Maritime Museum inspired by the maritime artifacts present on site:

We decided to use the artifacts present on the Maritime Museum to manifest the purpose of a library: education of the visitors. Our building provides experience of the maritime artifacts in life and not just as objects to be seen and not to be experienced without a purpose of usage, and what better place to educate the masses with its architecture and experience than a library.

We have merged and collaged the following elements and artifacts to define an experience just appropriate for a maritime library:

Ship: we have conceptualized the ship form as a metallic object jutting out from gushing waves, thus proposing the active and interactive parts of the library in it. The ship form takes the digital/Audio-Visual Centre on the ground-floor and discussion/meeting rooms on the first.

Submarine: a conservative library has a very introverted nature to it, a submarine has the calm of oceans depth, thus our library portion is partially submerged underwater, with lights entering from the top (above water), and all openings are above six feet mark, giving view of the landscapes around yet not silhouetting any part of the library at the eyelevel.

Watch tower: we have anchored the library and the Audio-Visual centre in the centre by two watch towers which take up all the vertical circulation and the elevators; this is the only part of the library that is oriented on the same grid as the entire existing maritime museum.

Suspended Bridge and the suspension cables: we have suspended a stack of wooden bridges from the two watchtowers which connect the two blocks and the top most bridge happens to be a floating bridge for viewing purpose.

Propeller: we have applied the torque movement of a propeller unto our library plan by skewing the grid orientation of the two units of the building: the A/V Block and the Library Block, pivoted in the centre by the Watchtower Block that maintains the movement of the entire building.

Decks: we have provided the two ends of the building with implied decks, a Water Deck at the ship (A/V Centre) end, and a Tree Deck at the Library end. We have also given the project a Sky/Rooftop-Deck above the Ship Block, which houses a cafeteria besides being a deck to view the entire site and the water deck (made of fountains) from.

Windows: Pot-hole windows are provided in the Submarine Block and linear ones in the Ship Block