Article content

By 2018, East Village will boast this architectural marvel by Snohetta:

Photo by City of Calgary

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Central Library that could have been: the runner-up design Back to video

Had the library and East Village agency’s choice gone in another direction, it could have looked like this:

Photo by REX / Designboom.com

This boxier, taller design is by REX, an New York-based firm probably best known in this corner of the globe as the architects behind the Seattle Public Library. REX was actually passed over in favour of Snohetta (library in Alexandria, Egypt) back in late 2013, but last month the firm added its conceptual renderings for the Calgary library project to its public portfolio.

Here’s how the firm describes its vision:

“Despite an increased need to accommodate change, contemporary library design still relies on an outmoded version of flexibility: one size fits all… The result is not freedom, but imprisonment within a sterile box.”

REX instead envisions segregated boxes or “clusters” rather than a single box: a books cluster, a reading area, a rooms cluster, and a central learning commons.

Calgary Herald

The LRT tunnel that sits in the middle of the site would form a staircase that brings users up and into the library, to this pretty winter image:

Calgary Herald

One of the most curious concepts for the park spaces that straddle the cross-shaped library would be a “year-round” ice rink on one side. It’s unclear what merits that would have outside of the outdoor hockey season.