The Paper Library was an installation for the Paper Object Festival as a part of Riga 2014 – European Capital of Culture. During the site visit around the wooden houses district of Pārdaugava and the Kalnciema Quarter, HGA found a graffitied stone building at the edge of a small park. It was a Zvirbulis (sparrow in Latvian) library, a lonely-looking one-storey building. It was a challenge for the architects to create a large-scale installation out of paper. The proposal softly encased the library in folded white cardboards to highlight its unique location, its importance to the community and its need for attention. The building originally was built as a wooden summer house in 1880 and then turned into a public library in the 1960′s and covered with silica bricks. In 2014 HGA added one more layer of paper which represents the books and the library, from inside out. The installation was on view during the festival from 27.06 – 20.07.2014.
Design and info © Tomomi Hayashi – HGA (Hayashi-Grossschmidt Arhitektuur)
Images © Tomomi Hayashi and Inese Kalniņa
