The New Centrality – Library is inserted in the urban fabric of the city. The site is striking, given its uniqueness, position and dimension within the urban fabric.

Given the dimension of the program, the project sought to respond with a construction that would generate, consolidate and articulate the public spaces and streets in the urban structure.
It is not a program and the search for a given form for the building, but the form of the spaces are the result of actions taken in the project in order to solve formal and functional issues of the territory.

The implementation of the Library is based on the principle of consolidating the Elias Garcia street, where 12 parking spaces were created, and hiding the back of the existing building. Consequently, a square is created that mediates and relates cultural equipment such as the National Railway Museum and the Bairro do Boneco (the new National Railway Documentation Center, Museological Nucleus and Living Science Center).

Below ground there are 74 parking spaces accessed by Rua Behind dos Quarteis, which suffered a slight dilatation, and Rua Ferreira Mesquita. Some parking lots are equipped for people with reduced mobility and others with chargers for electric vehicles.

The pedestrian access from the parking lot to the square is extended through vertical communication and a ramp that “takes off” from the ground emerges at the level of the square.

From the square, a useful public space, with shadow elements that qualify the space and the stay of its users, creating principles such as shade and freshness in the city, the BM1 type library is accessed, respecting the proposal and recommendations defined by the Directorate General of Books, Archives and Libraries (DGLAB), and also some directives to improve the interstitial relationship between public space and cultural equipment.
It is also created a stopping area for 3 buses at Rua Ferreira Mesquita.