The protagonist of this year’s graduation studio is the Stockholm City Library. It was deesigned by famous Scandinavian architect Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940) and opened in the spring of 1928. It is a modernist building located in Vasastaden, a very diverse neighbourhood on the Northern Island of Sweden’s capital Stockholm.

The graduation studio, organised by the group Interiors Buildings Cities, started on the premise of two failed competitions that were written out for the Stockholm City library. The project aims to reintegrate the Library into the urban fabric and the city life of Stockholm. It does this by bringing the Bazaar into the building, creating a public, inviting route on the level of Svaevägen Street, and connecting this central city axis to a lowered square that finishes the route throughout the building. While following this public route, the visitor can go up to more focused areas within the library and discover its beautifully kept reading room and Rotunda centrepiece.

The aim is to create a library that not only allows for the individual consumption of knowledge but also facilitates the exchange of knowledge between the inhabitants and visitors of Stockholm.

This thesis will research Tel Aviv and more specifically its ‘White City Area’, which is Unesco World Heritage due to a great number of International Style buildings and urban heritage, which is unseen anywhere else in the world. The research uses the Zionist vision of Theodor Herzl, described in his book Altneuland as a framework, who wrote, before the foundation of Tel Aviv, how he described the future of Israel as a Modernist country with many European influences. Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew city, was built by Jewish immigrants and with them also architects. The town planning was done by the British colonial Patrick Geddes. Both architects and Geddes implemented European ideology and technology. The research will be what the relationship is between the theory of Herzl, the planning of Geddes and the execution of the modernist architects, which were heavily influenced by the Bauhaus School founded by Walter Gropius. Herzl already referred to many characteristics of Tel Aviv and Israel which were later indeed implemented by the urban planners and architects. The research will be done using the book Altneuland historical books, imagery, maps, Israeli songs, secondary literature, archival material, interviews and own experi- ence. This research seeks to add the theoretical ideas of Herzl to the analysis of how Tel Aviv became the buildings with the most International Style buildings in the world.