VIENNA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY & LEARNING CENTER

Vienna, Austria

Understanding that architecture, from mundane to monumental, informs place reveals a community’s level of sophistication. Beyond the jaw-dropping visual impact of this building by Iranian female architect Zaha Hadid, we read further to see an educated community, seeking to raise itself from just being a learning institution to being a place to be. The LLC rises as a polygonal mass from the heart of the new campus. Straight lines outside the building separate as they move inward, becoming curvilinear and fluid, to generate what the architect described as “a free-form inner canyon”, whose shapes move like the layers of a rock formation, giving form to an interior great atrium that serves as a social meeting point. 

The exterior of the building, with its complex geometry, is marked by two angular elements of contrasting colors, separated by a glass joint that makes the programmatic separation within its interior readable from the outside. The two elements are entangled with each other, and are somewhat reminiscent of a large ocean liner. At 90 feet in height, the large dark, cantilevered mass, known as the Monitor, contains the Library. The rest of LLC’s functions are located in the other volume, defining two separate shapes that are wrapped around each other to enclose the central glazed meeting space. 

The sloping facades, tilted up to 35º, are of architectural concrete. The side walls have four different angles and are wider at the top than in the bottom. The core walls have “inlays”, areas with a smooth, concrete architectural surface, optically suspended.