The Black Diamond

The Black Diamond, by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, has become one of Denmark’s most iconic landmarks. It represents a breakaway from the traditional library, housing a whole host of cultural and academic commodities, as well as, becoming a natural gathering place for the community. It expands on the tradition of a library, as a formal academic environment, to include not only six reading rooms and roughly 200,000 books, but also an extensive collection of digitized media, exhibition rooms, a bookshop, a café and concert hall. “We are drawn to these projects for their potential to engage the public and not only to give cultural and social life to their cities and towns, but also for their ability to work as an accelerator for learning and knowledge,” says Bjarne Hammer, a SHL founding partner.

In the same way that this building fights the normal definition of the library, so to does it argue for the modernization of the built form in an area filled with traditional Danish architecture. The Black Diamond’s design was based on a desire to bridge the old Royal Library to a new modern approach to the public library. Its angled shape and canted facades are dynamic features clearly distinguished from the traditional square angles of the original library. This monolithic building, is airy and open on the inside, it’s reflective exterior not only encouraging the study of books, but the exploration and discovery of new types of media.

At its core a library is a place for people and books. In many traditional library schemes the user has difficulty interacting with either books or people. The Black Diamond challenges the idea of a library as hallowed dusty halls lined with shelves of books, instead creating a space that encourages exploration and interaction with people, media and learning.