The municipal library named Elsa Morante is the result of the restoration of the former Oratory of San Michele and extensions to it.
The pre-existing building belonged to Lonate Ceppino’s historical heritage. On a rectangular plan, the two floor building housed the Civic Library on the ground floor, while the first floor was unused. From the outside, the main entrance façade has a taller decorative part which is independent from the roof structure. This façade stands out further on the building gutter line and laterally its design suggests the idea of an unfinished bell tower. Also in this case, the bidimensional outline doesn’t have a counterpart in the interiors.
A few ornamental elements mark the façade hierarchies. The design of the fronts is organized in horizontal bands at different heights while on the north, south and west fronts a system of vertical pilasters apportions the windows on both floors.
The intervention aimed to restore the historical pre-existing building and to adapt the new building to its re-gained functional use. The key to interpreting the project lies in the dialectic between the existing structure and the new building, the theme that guided all the project choices.
The relationship between the two presences opposed tactility with lightness, opacity with refraction: the contrast stresses the distinctive features of the two volumes. The historical building was retrieved while respecting the existing structures, through sensitive exploitation of its original features. The volume of the extension rises parallel to the east front of the oratory: it is a narrow elongated block, a sort of light shell in perforated white metal siding with its section reduced towards the top. Between one building and the other there are two further elements of connection: on the ground floor a small box completely roofed with glass provides access to the library during the day while at night it is transformed into a lantern that evocatively illuminates the empty space between the two buildings; then on the first floor there is a suspended box faced with wood that contains a tunnel that links the service block to the room with trusses, marking by opposition the fusion between new and old.
The Library appears internally as an open space lined with wooden bookcases conceived as clusters of forms of different heights; on the upper floor the truss room is a multipurpose and flexible space intended for holding conferences and exhibitions. The volume of the extension articulates the service rooms, the technical spaces and vertical links to the upper level, though the promenade linking them is not confined to the first-floor level. Where the internal space contracts, a sloping walkway continues as far as small roomli by a corner window: at this point the architecture is dematerialized and the boundaries between interior and exterior disappear.
