Carlos Santamaría Centre by JAAM

Photographer Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre has sent us these photographs of a curved concrete library in San Sebastian with a narrow courtyard driven through its centre.

Completed in 2008 by Ander Marquet Ryan of Spanish architects JAMM, the Carlos Santamaría Centre is located on the campus of the University of the Basque Country.

Timber-panelled walls surround the secluded courtyard, which separates the two-storey building into two asymmetrical halves.

The library’s book collection is housed on two storeys of the larger half, while the smaller part contains separate study rooms and a lecture theatre.

The round concrete exterior walls converge into a point at the front entrance to give the building a teardrop-shaped plan. Students walk through this pointed entrance into a double-height colonnade, where L-shaped timber columns surround a glass wall and roof.

Photographer Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre previously photographed the helter-skelter-like Centro Niemeyer by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, which you can see here.

Here's some information from the architect:

The Carlos Santamaría Centre, located in San Sebastian is an advanced data centre and library, linked to the Ibaeta University Campus and the result of a competition developed by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

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The building is conceived as a huge container, shaped from a spontaneous outline following the natural curve of the lot. The line is the wall containing the two blocks arranged in a north-south direction, and its vertex is at the place we consider the most important: the building’s main access, which opens up like a large mouth, pointing the vertex towards the sky.

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The division of the construction into two blocks also makes the creation of a private, inner garden possible, like an extension of the spaces that overlook it. It is a quiet, green area, accessible for strolling, reading and group meetings, always lighted from the south and north, an outdoor counterpoint to urban noise, inside the building.

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With regard to its construction, the principal façade of the building is a curved wall of 25cm made out of white self-compacting concrete. On the other hand, in the garden which divides the building the solution of the facades consists of IPE wood planks.