The Public Monade
Personal Info
Name: Vincent Peu Duvallon
Nationality: French
Institution / Company: Oncetudio
Name: Miao Zhang
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Jiawei Dou
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Xiaoyu Zhang
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Ziyu Li
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Yue Pan
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Renyuan Liu
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Zirui Wang
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
Name: Zitao Zhang
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Wenzhou-Kean University
-FINALIST of Non Architecture Award Competition | Category: Architecture
Located an hour from Seoul, Songdo was planned to make Korea highly attractive and competitive in the 21st Century globalization. It never has been planned for its inhabitants but for multinational companies. As such it embodies the dystopian urban project of the early 2000: “a wavy version of the Plan Voisin” according to Richard Sennett, at the service of “centralized control that prescribes how people should leave”. A city of isolated objects centralized by a digital Panopticon: the smart city.
The Public Monade embodies these values: it is another isolated object, a monade, and it is organized on an actual Panopticon radial plan. But it aims to invert the proposition of its context: the isolated object is here an island of public space in a sea of gates communities and private golfs and the Panopticon loses its central observing point at the profit of a central void where everybody can see each other, a vertical public space organized around this void, where anyone at each floor can go, sit, study, read, and meet. Following the 19th century tradition of libraries as a retreat space from the city ( Labrouste, Boullée … ) the library is an introverted object while some spaces, dedicated for public gathering ( cafes, reading spaces…) opens sporadically to the outside, through terraces, framing views to the golf and the view toward the sea.
On the ground floor, a few steps downs are leading the visitors slowly away from the turmoil of the city, to a small plaza that continues inside the first floor of the library, the café and the auditorium. There an escalator leads to the second floor where the central void is starting and the light coming from the last floor. On the third floor a reading space opens to a terrace facing the entrance plaza.
At the crossing of Academy Street, and Convensia Street, two large avenue, and surrounded by small parks, the library becomes a kind of picturesque landmark, recalling Piranesi drawings of Roman infrastructures. It is located facing the Academy Street, isolating the public plaza from the Academy Street’s noise. The volume is slightly chamfered in order to allow the southern light to reach out the plaza.
Project Type: Public Library
