Saxon State Library
Dresden, Germany
Ortner & Ortner Baukunst

A neoclassical formality returns to library design, leavened with a modern sensibility

© Stefan Müller

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By David Cohn

The new Saxon State and University Library in Dresden combines the official collections of the Saxon State with the general library of Dresden’s Technical University, providing space for 7 million volumes. Its site, once the university’s soccer field, is ringed by mature trees and earth berms originally built for spectator seating. Set in a developing area at one edge of the campus, the library will be joined by new academic buildings.

The design by Laurids and Manfred Ortner, which won an open competition in 1996, plays back and forth between Neoclassical formality and the more informal and practical approach of contemporary buildings. This dichotomy highlights the two origins of the library: the Saxon royal collections and the public university’s holdings.

Putting the bulk of the building underground allowed the architects to create a large public square for the growing campus. The library occupies three levels below the square, which is set at the height of the earth berms. The architects framed the square at the front and back with a pair of administrative blocks clad in Türing stone, a honey-colored German travertine. Covered in sod and crisscrossed by paths, the square is punctured by skylights, ventilation pods, and emergency egress hatches to the library below.

In contrast to the uneasy, artificial naturalism of this too-often punctured lawn, the library’s main entry portico presents a row of black precast-concrete columns that evokes the Neoclassical grandeur of Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin. The portico, which is partially hidden from the street by the site’s berms, reveals itself through a small off-center opening, seeming to emerge from the earth like a picturesque English garden grotto.

The stately reading room lies at the heart of the building and rises from the lowest level to a skylit ceiling. Surrounded by open floors, it is enclosed by bookshelves and paneling of stained wood and fiberboard.

Mediating between this grandeur and the surrounding floors is a series of double-height, skylit circulation galleries, which are sometimes staggered between the three floors in a lively section of Piranesian complexity. The reading room is ringed by these cuts and a double-height row of wood columns.

Interior finishes search for a balance between economy and dignity. The warmth of wood mixes with the honesty of untreated concrete columns and exposed ductwork. Carpeting is ingeniously printed with a pattern scanned from a sample of Türing stone. The Ortners also apply a "bar code" pattern—a shallow relief of boxes in irregular configurations—to the building’s stone cladding, as well as to the wood paneling and coffered concrete ceilings inside.

See the February 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Saxon State Library

Location:
Dresden, Germany

Gross square footage:
485,000 sq ft

Total construction cost:
$80 Million

Owner:
Freistaat Sachsen,
www.sachsen.de
Vertreten durch das Staatshochbauamt Dresden

Architect:
Ortner & Ortner Baukunst, Berlin/Wien
Planungsarge S.L.U.B.
Ornter & Ortner Baukunst und ATP Achammer-Tritthart & Partner,
München, GF Burkhard Junker
www.ortner.at