EIBF
Edinburgh International Book Festival Headquarters
Edinburgh International Book Festival Headquarters
The aim of the project is to provide a propper and bigger space for edinburgh international festival headquarters. The site is located at the bottom of the old toldbooth wynd, which is connected with the royal mile. There is an existing brick building dating from the 30's and is next to Canongate's graveyard.
Trying to keep the historical trace of the old toldbooth wynd and this part of the old town, the new building should grow up, getting out of the deep situation of the site, and getting different views of the city. At the same time, the building could enhance the link between the old town and calton hill.
The written words are the ones that last in books, as the history last in the city's building. Thus, books tell stories as architecture tells the city story. But we cannot guess until we go through its pages and you live it. The idea in this building is trying to reach the same feeling that you get when one book arrives at your hands: from outside you are able to get some intuition of what there will be inside, this is the curiosity that will engage you to go in and to find out what these words (space) contain. Once inside, you will move to discover, to catch the different feelings provided by the different light and space, as the different parts of a book do.
The building is showed as austere and introspective, but at the same time keeping a strong relation with its surrounding, the one that it wants to be linked with, trying to catch not only the movement connection but also the visual ones. As it happens when you read a book, your senses still get what is going on around you.
To make stronger this complex relation with outside, the building grows in different highs, letting in frames different view of the interesting things we have next to us and tell us some story of the city. So, from what happens inside connected with what does outside, the building becomes a small story in a big one.
