Biblioteca Sant Antoni – Joan Oliver

About this place

The Biblioteca Sant Antoni – Joan Oliver is a public library by RCR Arquitectes, the Olot-based practice of Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta, recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2017. Completed in 2007, the building sits in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood of Barcelona's Eixample district — a densely built residential and commercial area that has since become one of the city's most active neighbourhoods culturally and gastronomically. RCR's approach here is characteristic: the building is made almost entirely of weathering Corten steel and glass, materials the practice returns to across many scales of project. The steel arrives at the building already aged to its deep reddish-brown patina, so the building reads as simultaneously new and ancient — a quality that suits a library, which is also simultaneously contemporary and archival in its function. The plan organises the library around a central reading room that receives natural light from above, with the steel structural elements left visible and the glass facades allowing the interior programme to be legible from the street. This transparency is deliberate: RCR consistently designs public buildings to communicate their civic function visually, so that the library announces itself as a place of gathering and reading without signage or decoration. The Sant Antoni library is not among RCR's most celebrated projects — that distinction goes to their landscape and winery work in the Garrotxa region — but it is one of the most accessible examples of their approach for visitors to Barcelona, and it demonstrates that the same sensibility that produces landmark architecture also works at the scale of neighbourhood infrastructure.