Design Action realized a minimal, yet functional space for the Waterway Library in Hong Kong.

If the library is ship full of knowledge, good learning atmosphere is a breeze that leads the students sail to their destinations. Getting knowledge helps the students find a breakthrough to their study or develop other skills. We would like to create a relaxing, self-paced study space, which attracts them to stay behind after classes and fall in love with knowledge.

This project is on the Lantau Island. The island is surrounded by sea with tremendous nature landscape. In densely populated Hong Kong, it is rare to have a good balance of high-rise residence and nature. We hope this project links to this unique geographical environment. The main colors of the library are sea blue, cement and wood. They symbolize reading as a sea that nurture the concrete structured city, natural landscape, and a peaceful, relaxing experience.

The breeze through the space and guided different areas of the library with color mat. It also reflected the trail of the celling. The gray, blue and wood lighting design when through the white colored celling as a breeze of desire of knowledge. Different areas are designed to meet different study needs of the students, including book area, self-study area, staircase area, relax area, share area, discussion area, magazine area, meeting rooms in various size ad copy machines. The three main colors on the floor divided each area with rubber mats that provides a lively linear tension.

Once enter the library, the borrowing desk and bookshelf are in the sight, with a hanging book recommendation on top of the shelf. This setting makes it easier to interact between the librarians and students, which might increase the borrowing rate. The stretch of the bookshelf is a set of staircase for student to sit and read. When the projector screen scrolls down, this staircase with the capacity of 30 people become a teaching area. Besides the staircase is self-study area. When students sit on the bar chair, they can admire the nature view outside the window. This provides privacy and there is a power socket build-in to each desk to help the students study with efficiency. The newly designed bookshelf can store 20000 books. The bookshelf is a windsurf full of knowledge that led students to their destinations. There is warm lighting at the magazine display area. Students can grab a book and sit on the sofa in the relax area. The designer believes that communication stimulates the learning efficacy. Hence, unlike the traditional library, there are two meeting rooms in the library. The celling of the meeting room uses curved blue line as main pattern, with a magnetic whiteboard on the wall. Students can discuss and share after classes. There is also discussion area and shared desk colored chair inside the library to allow more space for students to interact.

Design: Design Action
Photography: courtesy of Design Action