Bima Microlibrary

The Microlibrary is located at Taman Bima in Bandung. The neighborhood consists of middle class housing on one side and a Kampung (village) like structure on the other, where less affluent people live. The Microlibrary Bima is the first realized building of a series of uniquely designed small libraries in different locations throughout Indonesia, which we already built and further intend to build.

The local community there had already a library project in form of a book trolley going and thus was happy to receive a new library building. SHAU initiated the project by also securing funds and support from Dompet Dhuafa (charity organization) and the City of Bandung. The library is voluntarily run by a local youth organization who previously received training. Further an elementary school nearby is using the library regularly due to the lack of own library facilities.

The library is situated at a small square with a preexisting stage which was already in use by the local community for gatherings, events, hanging out and sports activities. Our intention was to add rather than take away, so we decided to enhance the open stage by shading it, making it rain protected therefore covering it in form of the floating library box.

The building is constructed via a simple steel structure and the stage was reworked in concrete and a previously missing, wide stair was added. The unique feature however is the façade made from more than 2000 re-used ice cream buckets which are arranged in form of a binary code saying: “buku adalah jendela dunia”, books are the windows to the world. The partly open buckets also enable cross ventilation and transmit diffused daylight (reduced to decrease heat gains) into interior. During evenings, the glowing Microlibrary sits like a lantern above the square.