The Stockholm Library, opened in 1928, was designed by the notable Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund. From its beginning, the library was an important element of the city's architecture as well as its social infrastructure. Nowadays the library asks for a change, following the new society and its challenges.
The project proposes an extension, respecting the monumentality of the existing structure, complimenting it and reinforcing its relation with the surrounding. The new structure should address the lack of scale and program diversity, offering a unique infrastructure where contemporary society would provide their needs and strengthen their relationships.

This project is a proposal for an extension to the Stockholm City Library, designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund in 1928. It raises the question of how should a modern democratic library look
like. Given its proximity to the historical library, the project also examines how to respond to and honour Asplund’s legacy. The project offers a new volume which allows the Stockholm City Library an additional 4000 sqm. It takes a position in the landscape, that allows the historical building to maintain its monumentality. Architecturally, the extension continues the dialogue with the existing library through a typological rearrangement, while also establishing its own distinct expression. The project aims to meet the needs of a modern democratic society by creating spaces that support various atmospheres and interactions, both formal and informal.

This project addresses the spatial challenges faced by the historic Stockholm City Library, designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund and opened in 1928. Renowned as a catalyst for library innovation, the library now struggles to accommodate the evolving needs of a modern library, with limited space for diverse study areas, group and private rooms, and community functions. The historical and architectural significance of the original structure constrains internal modifications, making an alternative solution essential.

A new addition is proposed south of the library, positioned between the pond and hill to integrate harmoniously with the natural landscape while respecting Asplund's original vision. This extension connects to the existing building at the ground and basement levels and features flexible, open spaces on the main floors, allowing for a variety of study areas. The upper level houses administrative offices, freeing space in the original library for its intended functions.

Externally, the addition is designed to reflect the library's dual role as a community hub and study space, with materials like stained wood and stone cladding that blend into the surrounding context. This expansion not only addresses spatial limitations but also enhances the library's connection to the city and natural surroundings, ensuring the preservation of Swedish heritage and maintaining the library’s role as a vibrant community resource.

The aim of this project is to reflect on the current situation of the Stockholm City Library and form a position towards the renewal and extension approach towards the current City Library. My approach is to connect the main library and the annex buildings by adding in-between spaces between them to create more public spaces and therefore form a intergrated library complex. By adding new public spaces connected to the existing structure, a sequence of spaces is created. The change in spatial experiences then influecne the way of how the library users accomodate the library. The interior design drew a focus on the interplay of the existing structure and the new added space, as it creates the interactions of different spaces to create the interactions between diverse social groups.

This project is a response to the changing role of the public library and how this change could be translated in a design for a new Stockholm City Library. A new structure is added to extend the existing library to provide space for large programs and activities that can't be hosted in the existing structure due to lack of space. This new structure is connecting the urban side of the site to the landscape of the park, while respecting it's surroundings. It carefully wraps around the hillside next to the Stockholm City Library, making it part of the landscape of the hill. The interior is a reinterpretation of the rotunda of Asplund’s library and a continuation of the urban and natural landscape it is part of.

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.

Stockholm Public Library, as a library from the 1920s, pioneered the use of architectural elements such as the Rotunda and open bookshelves, which softened the oppressive nature of traditional library architecture at that time. It embraced a humanistic approach, fostering a sense of active participation and community vitality among its visitors. However, after a century, the original library's space and knowledge dissemination methods are no longer sufficient to meet the diverse needs of society. This project, based on a failed competition held in 2006 for the expansion and renovation of the library and the advisory brief proposed in 2014 based on the 2006 competition, explores the new social functional positioning and service direction of the library in the face of a multicultural audience and is rooted in the unique political and cultural context of Stockholm. Considering the real conditions of the site and the developmental needs, the project aims to construct a new library to make a supplement of the existing library. It will encompass diverse functional spaces such as an Immersive E-media room, a multilingual reading room, and an urban activity lounge to cater to a variety of audiences. The design also involves the transformation and activation of the overground plaza and underground spaces, facilitating communication and connection between the new and old libraries. The goal is to create an interactive entity that radiates into the urban space.

For centuries, libraries were physical representations of human knowledge and power held by privileged classes. Over time, they evolved into substantial social and urban infrastructures. From purely knowledge-acquisition institutions, they transformed into inclusive spaces, facing the issues of equality and multiculturalism.
The Stockholm Library, built in 1928 by the Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund was pioneering at that time and among the first, to open its stacks to the public. However, as a near century passed, the library needed to face the ever-changing nature of society and culture. Since 2006, proposals have been made to adjust the library for contemporary challenges, yet none of them have been realised due to the concerns raised by the public and their emotional attachment to the library.
The proposed extension aims to restore the intended characteristics of the educational area around Observatory Hill in Stockholm, including the typology of the modern library and its heritage. In the current situation, the Stockholm Library on its own does not fulfil the typology of a modern library. Currently, it serves as a calm temple of focus, however, it lacks facilities for diverse activities through which people can learn and appears disconnected from the hillside context.
The extension seeks to foster community and provide room for interactions as well as exploration, crucial for a culturally diverse city like Stockholm. Migrants and minorities are often marginalised and are provided with little to no integration opportunities.
On the other hand, with respect to the locals who deeply value the culture and heritage of Stockholm, the objective was to faithfully realize the architect’s concepts while respecting its historical context.
The ‘Spaces in Between’ concept proposes vast public space for new learning activities, without compromising the character of existing establishments. Moreover, it is a physical manifestation of the connection between the library and the observatory hill which together create an educational haven.

The Bananeira Garden (Horta da Bananeira) is a guerrilla garden in the escarpments of Porto that has collectively been created by a group of people with no claim of ownership or fixed identity. These gardeners explicitly refuse to recognize the state’s authority over the forgotten urban spaces in the city. Gardening turns into a political act, a quiet but constant form of spatial activism addressing climate change, social inequality, and real estate speculation. Porto’s administration is solely focused on expanding the city’s brand as a tourist destination, with tourist accommodations and rising prices forcing the local population to the margins. This could have consequences for the Horta da Bananeira, as it does not have any legal protection.

This project is an attempt to support the Horta da Bananeira in its struggle for emancipation. ‘Garden as Protest’ acknowledges the garden’s complexity and its value beyond the garden’s borders. A network of acupunctures makes sure that the border conditions of the garden are secured, fulfilling their social purpose and catering to the actual needs of the neighbourhood.
The project follows an eco-feminist approach, demonstrating a new role for the architect.

This year's Interiors Buildings Cities graduation studio focused on reimagining the contemporary art museum typology through the lens of M HKA in Antwerp. The process of designing a new museum building, guided by principles of anti-monumentality and a dedication to public engagement, led to a site-specific intervention revolving around the excavation of the former Zuiderdokken area. This intervention not only influenced the architectural expression, but also resonated with M HKA's anti-institutional identity.

The act of excavation serves to shape the architectural character of the museum and the park's topography, as the excavated soil is repurposed for rammed earth construction. The idea of excavation extends beyond the physical act of digging, it also encompasses the exploration of negative spaces and interstitial areas within the design. These spaces are intentionally integrated to create opportunities for art encounters, social interaction and various levels of public engagement throughout the museum experience.

Humankind has always made art. Through its appeal to the human senses, it has helped to shape the ways in which we perceive the world around us and, in its varied forms, offers a means beyond language through which we have become able to articulate our relationships with one another. Throughout the ages art and architecture were facilitators of societies’ development and transformation, of which the peak was embodied by the 19th century palaces of culture: public museums and galleries. Later, as modernity rapidly adapted the world to human needs and subsumed sublime nature within its own image, art became means of resistance. Expanding out of the studio and the gallery it moved outside, to portray and critique the relentless industrialisation against its own backdrop. Artists co-opted and adapted redundant structures left behind by the contemporary city’s rampant process of change.

The competition brief for the development of the M HKA, the contemporary art museum in Antwerp embodies many of the larger issues that arise from the forementioned shift. It emerged out of the activities of the ICC (Internationaal Cultureel Centrum), which was founded in the revolutionary spirit of the late 1960s, and had a long history of making place for itself in which an adaptation of an actual palace and an old disused office building were considered, until it finally settled in an old grain warehouse to become a full-fledged museum in 1982. The next step in its development, which is planned to move the museum into a new, purposely build location asks therefore to be consciously understood and developed. It is to be placed near the current building, as an urban figure in focus of undergoing conversion of a monumental former dock into a linear public park.

The proposal turns challenges of the competition brief: an existing building on site, the scale of the programme and limited budget into factors that generate quality. Efficiency is used to shape identity, linking to the legacy of Antwerp as a harbour city. It is a building that does not mimic the expression, but follows the logic of efficient structures for the industry. A museum that accommodates existing structure, the art, the general public, gallery visitors, and the neighbours. It creates environments, provides striking curatorial settings and versatile workspaces and does so with minimal means while fulfilling strives of the competition brief and reducing the carbon footprint. It welcomes the legacy of the M HKA as a pioneering institution that always appropriated spaces, exposes the back office to the visitors to contrast them with pristine gallery interiors, and becomes an icon by establishing its own league instead of trying to fit in. Yet it fits within the city.

MHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp seek to change its current building and re-establish itself on the wide arena of cultural institutions in Antwerp. Museum has a complex history, from its roots in the anti-museum of the ICC, via the “kunsthalle with a collection” up to today’s aspirations to be a part of a network of regional museums and seeking to take its place within a global context.

The layers of critique inherent in this trajectory are evident in the counterpoints established in the clients brief for the proposed museum: questions of material, abstraction, scale, and scenography underpin an oscillation between what it describes as anti-museum fascinations and technical museum requirements. Underpinning this are fundamental questions about contemporary art’s history and its relation to wider questions of culture, society and the world of art and artistic practice, embodied in its attitude to the very idea of the museum.

The MHKA's legend was built on contacts with avant- garde movements in art of the 1950s and 1960s, such as minimal and conceptual art. Their most prominent representative was Gordon Matta Clark, who worked in Antwerp at the time and whose artworks formed the foundation of the museum's current collection. Initially informal, the movement became institutionalized over time in the form of the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC), and decades later the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp (MHKA) became its successor. The planned construction of the new museum also involves renaming the institution the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art (VMHK).

The duality between the avant-garde past and the institutional present is an important part of the museum's identity. How does one think about the setting of the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art in a way that respects its critical history and context in which it operates?

In summary, the design proposal is a new building for the contemporary art museum the M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerpen), which in the future will be the Flemish oriented contemporary art museum VMHK (Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art). The project location is the existing court of appeal on the Zuiderdokken in Antwerp. The existing building will be demolished because of spatial and technical requirements and will make room in my proposal for a new museum: The building arises from the park, which the building faces. A landscape slopes up to the building's public ‘forum’ space. It is a raised level, where one can look over the flood defenses onto the river, while the art handling truck enters the building underneath. This artificial landscape, which forms the base of the building, consists entirely of recycled concrete, with various repurposed aggregate materials. Above the forum space rises a large volume, a biobased box, with all the 'silent program' of the museum. The careful placement of circulation cores allows for large art spaces.

The new design for the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art (VMHK) endeavoured to provide a contemporary interpretation of the nineteenth and twentieth century warehouse architecture, translated into a contemporary art museum. The 'Warehouse for Art' symbolizes its role as a repository for the museum’s knowledge and art, while at the same time identifying with the genius loci of the former port identity found along the Scheldt river and its surrounding brick buildings.

This industrial character is neutral, but not as aseptic as a characterless white cube and does not lose itself in architectural caprices. Moreover, the design its flexibility makes the building adaptable for its upcoming function as a museum and the ones after, thus making it future-proof.

Simultaneously, the design questions the conventional notion of a contemporary museum, aiming to transcend its exclusive institutional character and function as a public building instead. Within this pursuit of an 'anti-museum', the warehouse exemplifies a departure from the typical museum typology. Instead it represents a typology that contemporary art museums have discovered in industrial heritage and can fit into newly constructed buildings of the twenty-first century as well.

This year‘s graduation studio of Interiors Building Cities focuses on the redevelopment of the M HKA (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen) in Belgium. In the context of an industrial metropolis like Antwerp, museums have evolved from spaces of representation and power structures to spaces for critique. Artists have repurposed disused structures in the city, including those left behind by the contemporary city, giving rise to new forms of art and the formation of art collectives and institutions since the 1960s. These spaces now serve as platforms for the public to engage with and learn about contemporary art and its significance in our society. They showcase a diverse range of mediums, from paintings and sculptures to photography, video, installations, and performance art. Additionally, educational programs and events are offered to enhance visitors‘ understanding of the art and the creative processes behind it.

With the redevelopment and relocation project, M HKA aims to establish a Flemish museum of contemporary art on a new site in the southern part of Antwerp. While the client‘s brief emphasizes the need for static sequences of spaces and programs, it fails to address the potential for unpredictable changes and user demands. Public institutions must bring flexibility to the forefront of architectural design, particularly when dealing with so-called obsolete buildings. This perspective is evident in the new site‘s design, where the planned demolition of a former court building is the only justification given in the brief. In my graduation design, I critique this decision by proposing to retain most of the existing structure, using it as the foundation for new towers on the site.

The Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) is an institution strongly rooted in the existing fabric and socio-political framework of Antwerp South. The museum is located on the outskirts of the city, which has undergone consistent urban development and urban planning as the city grew into one of the most diverse metropolitan areas in Europe. In this development, the Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art gradually sought to evolve with society and make way for a larger institutional purpose that pushed the museum agenda towards a more formal and generic interpretation of art spaces and how they are interpreted in light of the current zeitgeist.

In my final project, I revisit the meaning of art presentation in relation to cultural building by reconnecting with MKHA’s historic approach of capturing the essence of conserving and presenting contemporary art, an identity and genesis of an institution that has curated its growing collection between less conventional building layout and architectural fabric.

My design proposal is based on the sustainable idea and design language of reusing existing building tissue, specifically the former courthouse building which is assigned for the new developments of the M HKA or at the time entitled: Vlaams Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst (VMHK). A building typology that exists of two prefabricated office towers that are connected by a low-rise structural addition and entrance.

Here, the practice of preserving and exhibiting art in an anti-museum condition becomes relevant again through the presence of existing structure and building layout, which, in resemblance to the former MHKA building, reinforces this familiar identity in which exhibiting art bears the title ‘symbiosis between’ anti-museum condition and institutional purpose.

MHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp), is a museum established in the 1970's. Given spatial and characteristic requirements, it is seeking for an expansion and reestablishment in the wide art scene in Antwerp. The MHKA has deep roots in the city itself, including public inclusivity and how people have been experiencing art in various ways. From open public events, to temporary exhibitions, the museum centralizes itself around this ideology and wills to expand this to a greater scale. The new museum, VMHK, is a result of this will. From facilitating isolated art galleries to open forums on different levels, the museum is a place to gather, discuss, experiment and experience. With adaptable spaces that host a variety of public activities; the establishment seeks to act as a ground for inter & intra dialogues for the people, for the art and for the city. It becomes an unfiltered, common ground that embodies the institution's stance and character towards art & people.

Future Bank, the graduation studio of Interiors Buildings Cities 2021/2022 revolves around the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium, a 90.000 m2 triangular building block. The design proposal for this transformation is based around the adaptive re-use of the vast, complex, existing building that the National Bank of Belgium currently is. The building is filled, or rather cluttered, with materials. Ranging from building services like ducts and heating, standardized elements such as raised floors, partition walls, suspended ceilings to objects such as chairs, tables, shelves. Essentially, the function of many of the building components is to obscure building services like ducts, cables and heating. Undressing, re-configuring and displacing are the three main actions in the strategy of the design. The design proposal aims, among other things, to make building services active instruments in the interior of the office, that no longer need to be obscured. The New National Bank of Belgium reveals the illusion and theatre of the office. Attempting to make space fully available for its inhabitants and visitors. The New National Bank of Belgium merges the public of Brussels with the employees of the bank. New public entrances are to be found on the ground floor, both leading into the monumental banking hall of the building. A permanent exhibition space, where the Belgian art collection of the bank is offered to the public of Brussels.

Currently due to the virtualization of the way of money and the role of the bank itself of money transactions being replaced, although the National Bank of Belgium has a huge space, it is difficult to play a role in the current society. In addition to this, this huge banking system not only embodies national capital but also alienates it from its urban context. In the future, the National Bank of Belgium will have fewer employees, how to use the extra space to make this building permeable and maintain it as a symbol of the National Bank?

This project aims to transform the traditional space of the bank and add new public spaces open to the public by using the working mode of co-working, so as to provide better working space for different social groups. Besides, my project also provides a new public interior for city dwellers by introducing other public spaces. Through the introduction of different programs. The bank will be turned into a huge collection of workspaces, as well as new containers that can contain various urban activities.