Light reading: a library which draws on the light of the north to create a major contribution to both civic life and scholarship.

Sweden is developing an enviable record for producing fine public libraries, just at a time when they are being shut down, or at least gravely starved of funds, in other Western countries. The one at Harnosand, on the east coast, about halfway up the Gulf of Bothnia, has quite lot in common with the Linkoping library (AR May 2001). For instance, both occupy crucial sites in the centre of town facing the main park; both are large glass boxes; both are intended to be social foci, as well as centres of learning and leisure.

But they are modified by local circumstances. At Harnosand, the library is between the city centre and the university and links both. The site slopes steeply from university down to the town, so the glass box is carved into the hill and there are two main entrances, with the upper (eastern) one three levels above the townward one diametrically opposite in plan.

Internally, trays of floors serve different functions, with the municipal library occupying lower parts and the academic areas at the top. At park level, there is a large cafe, a bookshop and the lecture theatre, as well as the main battery of book-stacks. From here, an airy atrium rises past the double-height spaces of the first floor children's and main libraries to the academic levels on floors two and three.

Here, floor two (periodicals and study areas) is a gallery round the civic reading room and floor three hovers over the whole big space, with small balconies overlooking the park. On top is the much smaller county library.

In fact, the building is not so much a glass box as one sliced diagonally, with the upper end cut against the rock The whole northern side, which mainly fronts offices, workshops, staff areas and service rooms, is much more opaque with conventional ratios of solid to void. The delicate glass facades of the south and west sides with their trussed glass mullions and oiled oak transoms are surrounded by tall, elegant and immensely thin colonnades. They overlook the park and city centre, so the surroundings become a backdrop for the great volume.

By any measure, this is a fine, lofty urban space. It is filled with light, both from the glass walls, and from a slot at the back of the plan between the great reading room and the small spaces at the back. Down this chasm in the middle of the plan, light pours from clerestory and glazed east gable: down past the county library, where windows of the inner rooms draw in luminance; down the stairwell to the academic floors, right down to the level of the civic library. So the whole volume is filled with light. And, like a proper piece of city, it offers all manner of different spaces, from the public forum of the foyer to a wide spectrum of more particuar places, in which you can read, muse and search, in various forms of company and privacy, from the cheerful chat of study groups to the intense isolation of a carrel. This nuanced and sensitive interweaving of personal and public spaces is one of the greatest contributions of Scandinavia to democratic architecture, and it has key origins in much of Erskine's w ork, particularly his Stockholm University library (AR August 1983).

Putting two big glass walls towards west and south is normally a recipe for energy disaster. But the architects believe that heat gain in summer will be reduced by the roof overhang, by automated external blinds and movable internal curtains with trees of the park providing further shading. Cold in winter is to some extent modified by the oak mullions that are formed to lead downdraughts away from the glass. Air is led in to the whole building through a small waterfall in the foyer and expelled up the great slot. In between, it passes through the slats of the ceilings so that the mass of the concrete structure can act as thermal flywheel.

While the south and west sides are transparent, north and east ones are quite different, heavily insulated and solid. Here, the library almost seems to be two different buildings, an upper clumsy ruddy, almost rural one, rather unhappily married to a lower elegant, urban spouse. But at both top and bottom of the slope, the Sambibliotek is in scale with its surroundings. It is a decent and inspiring contribution to the city.

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Architect

FFNS Arkitekter, Umea with Hans Tirsen of Tirsen & Aili Arkltekter, Luleb as the architect responsible

Project team

Hans Tirsen, Martin Haller, Arne Wistedt, Ulf Widmark, Jan-Ola Hansson

Landscape

KM and Schlbbye Landskap

Interior design

Inredningsgruppen, Sundsvall

Photographs

Kalle Akesson

1

From park, library sails like an enormous Modernist ship towards city centre (left).

2

Building adopts scale of city centre and, simultaneously, academic buildings at top of hill.

3

Trays of space define different functions: for instance, newspaper reading terrace (right), first floor main library (left), academic reading levels above.

4

Materials are carefully chosen to create a calm and welcoming atmosphere for instance, oiled oak floor and balustrades, white stained pine laths in ceilings.

5

Climate control systems include automatically adjusted external blinds and light sensors on bookcases which activate ceiling lamps.

6

Roof overhang modulates sunshine and is finished with natural larch laths.

7

Upper (north-east) entrance, where more rustic building emerges.

8

Great slot which pours light down into middle of plan, past county library to upper entrance level and lower floors.