Beijing City Library by Snøhetta Opens in Tongzhou

The Norwegian practice Snøhetta announced the official opening of the Beijing City Library in February 2024, after the building had begun receiving readers at the end of 2023. The library stands in Tongzhou, the district 30 kilometres east of the centre of Beijing that has been developed as the city’s administrative sub-centre.

One room

The building is a glass box about 16 metres high, enclosing what Snøhetta calls the largest climate-controlled reading space in the world. There are almost no internal walls. Visitors enter into a central valley, a broad path that winds through the building in a line recalling the nearby Tonghui River. On either side the floor rises in stepped terraces that form two hills. The steps serve at once as ground, seating and bookshelves, and readers settle wherever they choose, as on a hillside. Quiet study rooms, meeting rooms and stacks are tucked inside the hills.

Above, the roof is carried on tall slender columns that open at the top into overlapping panels, shaped like the leaves of the ginkgo, a tree native to China and common in Beijing’s streets. Each column also contains lighting, acoustic treatment and the pipes that carry rainwater from the roof. Seen from the terraces, the columns read as a forest canopy with daylight filtering through.

Books and other things

The library holds several million volumes, most of them in an automated store below ground from which robots retrieve books on request. The public hall also includes exhibition space, a theatre, rooms for the restoration of old books and a collection devoted to intangible cultural heritage.

The glass walls are among the largest load-bearing panes used in China, and the roof overhangs to cut solar gain. Photovoltaic panels are built into the roof. The project received the highest level of China’s green building certification.

The setting

The library is one of three cultural buildings opened together in a new park in Tongzhou, with a museum and a theatre by other architects. The district is the terminus of the Grand Canal, and the old canal landscape is being restored around them. For Snøhetta, which made its name with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, it is a return to the building type thirty-five years on.

Visiting

Tongzhou is about an hour from the centre by metro. Entry is free, with a reservation through the library’s app or account at busy times and a passport for foreign visitors. The building has drawn very large crowds, and a weekday morning is the best time. It makes an excursion for those with a particular interest in architecture; most visitors with limited time will stay with the historic centre and the Beijing Central Axis.