Vyborg Library, Library building in Vyborg, Russia.
Vyborg Library is a library building in Vyborg designed with modern functionalist principles, featuring extensive glass windows that flood the interior with daylight. The reading room has a distinctive undulating ceiling with conical skylights that create an open, luminous environment.
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed the building in 1927, with Maria Lallukka providing crucial financial support for its realization. The completed structure opened to the public in 1935 as an important cultural landmark in the region.
The library was the first public library in Finland with a dedicated children's wing and open-shelf lending. Aino Aalto designed child-scaled furniture, handrails, door handles and shelving, informed by Montessori research and talks with her sister, a nursery school teacher. In 2002 Finnish-American artist Liisa Roberts ran creative writing workshops for local youths inside the building for her project What's the time in Vyborg?.
The library stands at Suvorov Avenue 4, its white wings set back behind grass and a gravel path, with the glazed entrance block facing the street. The reading rooms are reached through the stepped central hall, so expect level changes inside. The building is a federal cultural heritage site under state protection, and restoration work finished in 2013.
The undulating wooden ceiling of the lecture hall, which caused a sensation in the architectural world, collapsed while the building stood empty after the war and was rebuilt from Aalto's original drawings. The hall also saw the first use of Aalto's stool 60, designed by him for this interior.
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