The Black Diamond keystone
The most representative building of the Royal Library of Copenhagen -the largest in the Scandinavian countries, spread over several venues and universities-, popularly called BlackDiamond , is a building whose façade jet black , the deep, glossy black of polished granite, reflects the ripples of water and the city's frequently overcast sky.
As you approach the building, situated on the bank of the **Christianshavn Canal**, its lines trapezoidal they become less obvious and you think you are facing a mausoleum of enormous proportions that floats on the air, a sensation suggested thanks to the transparent glass plinth on which the cubes are supported.
Black Diamond teak interior
However, inside it changes radically: light invades the space through a glazed atrium that opens towards the sea and the sky , with spectacular views. This hall, which marks the counterpoint between exterior and interior, divides the building into two bodies and gives it its peculiar shape of Diamond . It is, in turn, the entrance to the library, and from it start the winding corridors through which you can access the reading rooms and other services.
This modern annex to the old brick library was inaugurated in September 1999, and the authors of the project were the architects Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen, who received a nomination for the major architecture prize Mies Van del Rohe.
BlackDiamond , which has become a very successful cultural center, has reading rooms, centers dedicated to music, maps or theater, an auditorium with capacity for 600 spectators, the National Museum of Photography, a bookstore, a restaurant-cafeteria and a large roof terrace.
The documentary collection is made up of some 250,000 volumes, 8,000 microfilms, and over 4,000 periodical titles , mostly foreigners. Here are, for example, manuscripts of Andersen, Kierkeggard either Karen Blixen . An adventure, that of the royal library, which King Frederick III began in 1653 and which continues today with renewed vigor.
The Black Diamond is the work of the architecture studio Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen