Can architecture be democratic? SMVIT university library

Within the SMVIT campus, the new library designed by Cadence Architects is not an isolated icon, but a permeable urban node that connects people, nature, and architecture, becoming a democratic space and a meeting place.

The library as the central node of the university campus

Located in a strategic point of the masterplan, the library of the SMVIT campus connects two fundamental parts of the university: on one side the residential buildings, on the other the academic pavilions. Its presence defines the creation of a central square, designed as the social heart of the complex. Here, the project by the architectural firm Cadence Architects does not seek monumentality, but integration, fostering relationships and fluid pathways within university life.

The architectonic structure open to connections

The library is designed as an inclusive building: it does not seek to impose itself as a symbolic object, but to welcome. Its form, far from being self-referential, privileges the dialogue between people, landscape, and campus. This approach, part of the best contemporary architectural projects, highlights the experience of lived space, rather than the isolated formal gesture of construction.

The morphology of the architectural project originates from the ground that hosts it

The volumetry is integrated into the ground and follows its inclinations, delicately emerging among the existing trees. The porosity of the project allows for open pathways: pedestrian passages cross the building, making it an urban connector. Like a tree, the library sinks its roots in the center, while at the edges it expands, creating welcoming, permeable, and traversable spaces.

Diverse Spaces, Without Hierarchies

The section and internal articulation offer a range of experiences: more intimate reading nooks, collective spaces for study and discussion, fluid meeting areas. There is no rigid hierarchy: the spatial variety supports an idea of democratic architecture, capable of accommodating multiple ways of being together, in balance between material concreteness and perceptual lightness.

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PEOPLE

Cadence Architects

Shankar Mutt Rd Shankarapura Bengaluru, Karnataka 560004 India