Dome

Terra cotta colored wall meets gray stone base and paving of plaza; Building occupies a site on Observatory Hill, at the crossing of two main streets. After detailed study of the entire area, Asplund chose to set a detached, extremely self-contained and symmetrical building at a very slight angle to the street grid. The library’s main hall, a clerestory-lit cylinder, rises out of a cubic block of reading rooms. The composition is reminiscent of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s Barrière de la Villette (1784-1789) in Paris, but there are also Scandinavian references, such as the doorways, which resemble those painted on the façades of Gottlieb Bindesbøll’s Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen. Most of the detail and ornament, more sparse than on earlier projects, is based on Greek motifs. Stockholm Public Library was Sweden's first public library to apply the principle of open shelves where visitors could access books without the need to ask library staff for assistance, a concept Asplund studied in the United States. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 8/2/2014)