UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BY RH+ ARCHITECTURE

The building of the University Library, located at the heart of the Guyanese University Campus, has to be a driving force within the University and contribute to its regional radiance. It is a structuring facility for all the buildings that constitute the Guyanese University Campus: its vocation is to gather books and readers in a unique place dedicated to knowledge, an open and generous place within the University.

It is about providing a cultural and documentary service of quality and also materialise the image of the regional community, therefore one of the main issues is to give to the building of the University Library a physical, social and symbolic identity that will impact the one of the neighbourhood and of the city. Our aim is to give to this unique building for its program and its central position, a proper architecture – identifiable by its volumetry and its uses – combined to an opening upon the whole University.

A gallery around the building and at the heart of the University The main architectural choice is the creation of an open peripheral space: unlike a construction cast in one piece with no dialogue with the surrounding, the building is wrapped up with a peripheral space of variable dimensions called “gallery” or peristyle. This gallery is an open space, a place where the students meet and pass through, an extra room between inside and outside, sheltered from sun and rain.

This one is made of a filter: a slope of wooden lace carefully placed around a concrete core. The wooden filter allows: • to open the building upon the whole University, • to provide an extra collective space, a transitional space for stimulating sociability, • to bring dim light inside the building, • to offer a building of great unity and create a landmark on the University Campus.

Our thought has naturally been brought towards an Amazonian Environmental Quality process, version of the High Environmental Quality certification (HQE®) in tropical and subtropical countries. The aim is to minimise, during its whole lifespan, how much the building will impact its external environment and the users who will live there during several generations.

The main goal for a library is to be able to read comfortably and the essential following criteria have to be taken into account: The thermal comfort - The sun protection of the building rests on the principle of the double-skin façade. All the facades and particularly the W/E facades are protected by this wooden filter that forms a very effective brise soleil, a second roof protects the programmatic heart from the solar radius very intense in Guyana (proximity of the Equator).

The visual comfort - It is a decisive condition: it consists in providing a diffuse light into the room so that any angle with which one takes a book, there are no embarrassing reflections. The project offers a gentle and enveloping light, as a result of the many openings spread over the facade: the generous light first filteres by the wooden skin is then released in a homogeneous manner inside the building. The acoustic comfort - By implementation of absorbing materials: soundproof ceiling, plaster wall lining for sound insulation of the Mezzanine and the training / exhibition rooms, etc, offer inside calm inviting concentration.

The building is composed of 2 parts: one that receives the public and one reserved for administration and its technical rooms. The spaces dedicated to the public are located on the ground floor and on the mezzanine; the ones for the administration on the ground floor and the upper level. Patios and rifts mark this dissociation and improve the lighting at the centre of the building. On the ground floor once coming through the gallery – true threshold – the library is reached through a double door entrance space open on a wide entrance hall. Into the hall there are: a waiting area, a reception desk, and in the back the sanitaries.

Two patios have been set up in order to bring natural light at the core of the building between the public part and the administrative part, and also in anticipation of an extension requested in the program. The central patio therefore becomes the heart of the connection element organised in a thematic garden. On the upper floor for the public part on the mezzanine there are: in the documentary room, spaces dedicated to individual consultation: individual work cubicles and research networks; reachable directly from the large central staircase or from a smaller staircase on the side.

A “box” or an autonomous volume that contains the multimedia training room on one side and the exhibition room on the other. The latter is also reachable from a staircase that gives onto the entrance hall. The entrance to the administrative part is direct from the ground floor, taking the elevator or stairs located on the side of the patio. The offices and the common premises are divided on both sides of the staircase; they all benefit from natural lighting and views outside and to the patio.

Location: Cayenne, Guyane 
Architects: rh+ architecture 
Architect partner: ARA - Jocelin Ho-Tin-Noé 
In charge of the construction: Anaïs Durand 
Eng. Structure: Technopôle Martinique / SODETEC 
Eng. Fluid: Louis Choulet 
Eng. HQE: Solener
Eng. Acoustic: Rémi Raskin 
BET Bois: Sylva Conseil 
Area: 2143 m2 
Cost: € 5.300.000 
Year: 2013 
Client: Rectorat de Guyane 
Photo: Jean-Michel André, Jonathan Cacchia