The New Building

a architect(s)

18 Firm

HS99, http://hs99.pl

19 Project Architect

Dariusz Herman, Piotr Śmierzewski, Wojciech Subalski

20 Type of project

new building

b aims of the new building

21 Short description of the main objectives and purposes of the project

The Centre will support science-related and culture-producing activities of the region’s academic community. Opening of the Centre will have a positive impact on the situation of Silesian students and researchers in terms of improving their access to didactic and scientific materials, books and magazines, as well as to top-quality knowledge about contemporary science. The Centre will combine the traditions of academic libraries with a modern vision of a regional centre of scientific and business information.

In short: more holdings in open stacks, more readers seats, development of the library in the field of research, computer and audiovisual materials, development of training for non-student readers, extension of the opening hours to the public, high quality of services and library and information sources, the only regional science centre, open for a range of expectations in terms of science, culture, education and knowledge. The new facility of the Scientific Information Centre and Academic Library is designed to store approx. 1.8 million book volumes. After the opening, it will store approx. 800 thousand book volumes.

c special features

22 Site

The Centre will be situated in the centre of Katowice, on Bankowa street, in direct neighbourhood of already-existing facilities of the main campus of the University of Silesia and University of Economics. Location in the city centre ensures a convenient access to the Centre using the existing road network, as well as tram, bus and railway network.

23 Architecture

The building was a rectangle of the following dimensions: 63.75 m x 46.25 m. Its open-access part is a three-storey structure which includes: on the ground floor: the main hall with adjoining reading rooms and lending libraries, conference rooms with capacity to seat approx. 90 persons, didactic room with capacity to seat approx. 30 persons, and other rooms; on the 1st and 2nd floor: open space for collections of books, acting at the same time as lending rooms in which the users, supervised by librarians, will be able to get the books, general and specialist reading rooms as well as rooms for librarians and administrative workers. Above this part of the building another one, also rectangular one was constructed, which is 14.3 m high and has the following dimensions: 48.75 m x 16.25 m. It will be used for the following purposes: on the 3rd floor rooms for employees of the department of book collection and compilation will be located; on the 4th and 5th floor storehouses closed for the readers will be located, including rooms for storing special collections on the 4th floor, and rooms for protected collections on the 5th floor.