The University Library - part of the Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen

With its 500 readers’ desks and some of the Danish Royal Library’s most sophisticated archive rooms, Copenhagen University’s new Humanities Library is a vital hub of the university’s new Amager campus.
 

User based design
Throughout the planning and design process, architectural focus has been on creating the optimum faculty library based on users’ needs. Dissing+Weitling – in co operation with a user group of Royal Library employees – analysed functionality requirements and work flow. Optimum design solutions catering for the needs of both employees and students were then designed on this basis.

The result of this intensive planning and design process is a building characterised by flexibility, airy openness and simple, clear definition. The three open floors have been laid out with incremental noise levels in mind – from easy socialising in the lounge and café areas to group study areas and finally to the library reading rooms designated for “quiet” use where students can concentrate completely on individual study.

73 km of cultural heritage safeguarded in climate controlled archive rooms
In addition to its study and reading facilities the new faculty library building houses three large archive rooms for Royal Library books and records. The first of these, erected as part of phase one of the project built in 1998, houses 45 km of book shelves. Phase two includes a further two archive rooms with – between them – 28 additional km of shelving affording storage conditions with optimum temperature and relative humidity control, including one archive at 2 C for particularly sensitive audiovisual material.

Award winning architecture
The opening of the new humanities library marks the completion of a long term project started by the Danish Ministry of Culture in 1989. The project attracted international attention even at this early stage, and Dissing+Weitling received the prestigious Japanese G mark Award for phase one of the project. With the inauguration of phase two the Ministry of Culture completes its plans and fulfils its ambition to create a combined library and archive facility designed and built to the highest architectural standard.