a s p l u n d  
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With the Stockholm Public Library, Erik Gunnar Asplund offers shelter in which the  inquisitive mind may dwell.  In the drum of the great hall, the reader is  free of  the city beyond the library walls.  Asplund has created a temple for the mind with the Stockholm Public Library.
The library was designed and constructed from 1920-29.  It is an elegantly restrained and classically composed building.  The library sits on a plinth.  This plinth recreates the space of the city and allows the building to sit apart from its neighbours.  The plinth also helps to maintain the street edge. 
In a move that Bob Venturi would describe as "both/and", Asplund fills the street front edge of the plinth with shops.  Thereby allowing the plinth to maintain the commercial charater of the street while simultainously elevating the library to a more rarified strata.       
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    The exterior storage and study areas protect the large central drum.  The fourth side was completed (as Asplund foresaw it would be) after the original construction period.  The central space contains reference works and significant texts.  It is also contains the circulation desk from which the librarian can survey the readers, the collection, and offer help to those searching in the library. 
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