It has won the 2022 City of Barcelona award, the Best Public Library of 2023 Award, the 2023 FAD Architecture Award, and the 2024 EU Mies Emerging Award. But even more importantly, it is loved by many users, who line up before its doors open every morning to make sure they get their favorite table, reading nook, or hammock. The building in question is the Biblioteca Gabriel García Márquez, a new public library in a peripheral 1960s working-class neighborhood of Barcelona. To boot, the building is mostly constructed of mass timber, lending the interior a humane and biophillic quality. What more can you ask for?
It is a moving structure. But, as it turns out, it is also ‘moving’ in the literal sense of the word. So much so, that several windows have cracked, and surveying prisms and fissurometers have had to be installed to measure the deformation that this building is undergoing. There is no imminent danger of collapse, but the deflections are enough to cause leaks whenever it rains, and while leakage may be a sign of great architecture to some, in a library that’s never a good thing. I first noticed the broken window panes and the cracks in the timber structure when I visited the building a year ago, but now a newspaper article has confirmed my suspicions.
Apparently, the mass timber structure supporting the huge cantilever over the building’s entrance needs to be partially demolished and reconstructed using, instead, a 20cm wide reinforced concrete wall in conjunction with a steel beam (a renovation that architects Suma Arquitectura do not consider “the addition of structural reinforcement”). The many locals who line up every morning to enter this place will undoubtedly be disappointed when it closes for 13 weeks while these works are carried out.
To be sure, the library has been built with what is still a relatively new building construction material –mass timber– and mistakes are always more likely to happen when something is new. But they also happen when form and material are a mismatch. In this case, the library –a building full of heavy books– has a huge cantilever, large column-free spans, and lots of glass in its facade. Is mass timber the most appropriate building material for such a design? Or, conversely, is such an open, large-span, cantilevered form the most appropriate one for mass-timber? Perhaps mass-timber is better suited for small-cell architecture such as mass-housing.
The other problem here is: what should we consider to constitute ‘prize-worthy architecture’? Did the jurors of the many awards this building has won simply not notice the cracks and the fissurometers and surveying prisms, or did they consider that the (indeed) high quality of the library’s spaces must take precedence over more ‘mundane’ things like structural integrity?
Finally, why can’t architects ever admit they have made a mistake? To say that construction work intended to prevent further building deformation is not ‘structural reinforcement’ is ludicrous. What is it then, regular building maintenance?
Criticalista 