The University of Pavia’s library, recently inaugurated, is the latest library designed by the Milan-based architecture practice Alterstudio, specialised in designing libraries open to the community that can also be used for socialising and collaborative learning.
The reading rooms signed by Alterstudio aim to create “cultural places for socialising” and to provide a service for the community, an added value that increases the social capital of a territory: in Pavia the library occupies a building that was previously a monastery and a barracks and now has become an unconventional space so as to allow and facilitate the collective learning and the dynamic exchange of knowledge.
The structure was organized around three different “levels”: one on the ground floor open to everyone, even to those who aren’t part of the university, with rooms for reading and collections; one on the first lower ground floor and on the first and second floor, exclusively open to university users, with collections directly accessible on open shelves; finally, the third level houses the deposits: it can only be accessed with the help of staff and is aimed at more in-depth research.
In conclusion, with the Pavia project, Alterstudio’s architects have designed a university library open to the community for the first time in Italy.
Photography is by Simone Ronzio.
