(Guanajuato, Mexico)-On September 7, 2006, the Guanajuato State Library held a dedication ceremony attended by Mexican President Vicente Fox, Governor of the State of Guanajuato, Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, President of Mexico’s National Council for Culture and Arts, Sari Bermúdez and numerous political and corporate dignitaries from all over Mexico. The 6,750-square-meter Guanajuato State Library is the first building of the Forum Cultural Guanajuato masterplanned by Pei Partnership Architects in 2003. It will house 170,000 books and can host 2,400 visitors per day. The Guanajuato State Library is one of 1,100 libraries created in Mexico under President Fox’s leadership. Each library is equipped with new state-of-the art technology.
Roberto Plasencia Saldaña, President of the Poliforum León commissioned Pei Partnership Architects to design the Forum Cultural Guanajuato. The Center is being built in León, the largest city, as well as the commercial and industrial center in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. With the recent expansion that has made the Poliforum León the largest convention center in Mexico, the Guanajuato Cultural Foundation plans to complement the city’s commercial success with the Cultural Center .
The Forum Cultural Guanajuato’s 9.5-hectare site includes a 1,500-seat opera house, a history and art museum, the Guanajuato State Library, and a new graduate-level art school. The master plan also includes a significant commercial component with a hotel, retail facilities, and restaurants. All of these elements will be arrayed around a series of plazas, ranging from grand civic gathering spaces to quiet, shaded patios.
The library consists primarily of two volumes interconnected by means of a 2-level glass gallery. The main volume is composed of three levels and the second volume of two levels. A large terrace occupies the third level of the lower volume. This terrace and the elevated plaza of the Library are covered by a large, 3-story steel pergola painted white.
On the lower level of the Library, the gallery serves as an access and distribution vestibule which leads directly to a central atrium covered by a skylight, which connects the three levels of the principal volume. The vertical circulation of the building is assured primarily by means of a monumental staircase located on the north façade of the access gallery whose own glass space offers generous views of the gardens to those inside and the activity and animation within the Library.
Three materials dominate the exterior of the building: white cantera, a Mexican stone which covers the outside walls; the glass of the gallery and the main staircase and the steel painted white of the pergolas. According to Chien Chung Pei, “The architecture is contemporary, yet the use of fine traditional Mexican materials, such as local stone, imbues the Center with local context and flavor.”
The simplicity of the form of the building and its materials provides the city of León with a dignified, elegant and modern building on a scale appropriate to the urban context of the city.
