Labin City Library

The Labin City Library is housed in the above-ground industrial spaces of Pijacal, a former coal mine. The local mine and the mining industry itself were shut down in the late 1980s, but the surface industrial buildings have been protected as valuable examples of industrial heritage.

The concept of accommodating a library in an abandoned industrial space follows the trend of numerous successful projects in Europe and worldwide that reuse old industrial buildings and complexes as showcase spaces hosting exhibitions and cultural programmes.

The library is but the first phase of the entire project. The following phases are to include the renovation of all the remaining buildings located in the Pijacal zone. Once the project is completed, it will become an important urban public space and a future cultural generator in Istria.

The idea behind the interior design of the library is based on preserving the existing character and feel of the building, featuring fragments of its former decoration and atmosphere. Throughout the interior space, parts of the old construction and materials remain visible.

The great Marble Hall, housing today’s library, is a place where once upon a time paychecks would be picked up and workers would go on strike. The new design highlights its spaciousness, grandeur, and the quality of natural light. In terms of colour, the project pays respect to the existing environment by choosing exclusively light and/or white shelves, walls, furniture, equipment, and floor finishes. This brings to light the existing marble walls, which gave the Hall its original name.

The bookshelves are installed into wall recesses, which were once windows overlooking the surrounding spaces. In order to make them accessible, the floor level is raised along the library’s perimeter.

Counterbalancing the bright white, monumental space of the library itself is a dark black foyer—an entrance hall of sorts serving as a link to the service rooms, the Internet centre, the stairwell, and a lecture room. With its colour and atmosphere, this contrasting space refers to the mining industry itself, bringing to the fore the very zone once used exclusively by the miners.

In the central corridor leading to the Bath, there is a small “Miners’ Memory” room, closed off by a thick rubber curtain, featuring archival videos of the miners’ underground life projected onto a water screen.

Plain green ceramic tiles covering the walls of the former miners’ bathroom have been preserved in patches, creating a visually impressive ornament along the black walls, discreetly referring to the room’s original use.

The main structural intervention in the space is the insertion of a new floor above the hall itself. In order to differentiate it from the original space as an add-on—a foreign body—it was designed as a steel box of sorts, featuring exposed steel construction and a metal floor and ceiling.

The next phase of the project to be developed is a Multimedia Hall, to be housed in the aforementioned miners’ Bath. It is a room of rather impressive proportions, leading into the recently opened public Library.