Snøhetta has completed the Beijing City Library, a glass-lined building featuring towering tree-like columns and rooms designed to resemble hills. Located in the Tongzhou district of Beijing, this library is now the world’s largest climatized reading space, marking the firm’s latest innovation in library design, thirty-five years after their work on Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. The project introduces a modern hub for learning, knowledge-sharing, and social interaction, enhancing Beijing’s cultural landscape.

In an era when libraries were thought to be declining due to digitization, Snøhetta aimed to redefine their relevance in the 21st century. The Beijing City Library emphasizes the physical experience of books, inviting visitors to engage with the tactile act of reading amidst a picturesque setting of hills and trees by the Tonghui River.

To reestablish the library's importance in public life, Snøhetta positioned the building as a center for learning and community. It fosters the open exchange of ideas, featuring spaces for exhibitions, performances, conferences, and the restoration of ancient texts. The library counters the notion of becoming obsolete by creating emotional connections between books, people, and the surrounding natural landscape.

The design incorporates elements that invite nature indoors while ensuring transparency in the interior environment. Central to the library is a nearly 16-meter-tall welcoming forum, from which stepped terraces rise elegantly. A meandering pathway known as the Valley serves as the building’s main circulation route, echoing the nearby river’s course and connecting the north and south entrances.

The terraced hills in the interior serve as seating, shelving, and relaxation areas, promoting informal interactions and reading experiences. This central space is accessible and includes one of the world’s largest Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) for books.

Tall, slender columns that mushroom into ginkgo leaf-shaped panels punctuate the space, referencing a tree species native to China. The overlapping panels and glass inserts create a canopy that filters daylight into the interiors, enhancing the reading experience. Visitors can overlook the valley of books and the landscape beyond, fostering a sense of unity with both nature and the literary world.

The landscape design integrates actual ginkgo trees at the building’s entry points, enhancing the connection to nature. The library celebrates Beijing’s cultural and natural heritage by merging reading, performance, and landscape.

The Beijing City Library also addresses climate challenges while incorporating advanced technology to enhance the visitor experience. It achieved China’s GBEL Three Star rating, the highest sustainability standard, by minimizing embodied and operational carbon. The building incorporates modular components and a rationalized structural grid to reduce manufacturing waste.

The ginkgo tree columns appear varied but are efficiently fabricated from a single module type. These columns contain integrated technology for climate control, lighting, and acoustics and collect rainwater for irrigation through a green infrastructure system.

Generous roof overhangs minimize solar gain on the glass facades, which are the largest load-bearing glass systems in China. The design improves the facade’s efficiency by using insulated low-E glass and lowering the glass height on the east and west. The roof also includes Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) to harness sunlight for renewable energy production.