Stadtbibliothek Ulm
The Ulm city library was founded in 1516 when the Münster pastor Ulrich Krafft willed his collection to his townfolk. A structure was built to the north of the cathedral to house the library. In 1726, the library moved to the Schwörhaus, where it survived through wars, the destruction and eventual reconstruction of the edifice in 1954. The city library was originally focused on science and research, and so in 1896, the Volksbücherei was established to serve the broader public. The two libraries eventually merged in 1999.
A new building was however needed, as the combined collections were outgrowing the Schwörhaus, which they shared with other city services. The winning proposal of the architectural competition launched in 1998 failed to gather public support, and the city resolved instead to go with the third place project, that of Gottfried Böhm.
Completed in 2004, Böhm's library sits at one end of the Marktplatz, a few steps away from Ulm’s famous Gothic cathedral. The building’s crystalline form, with its sharp geometry and transparent skin of glass and steel, contrasts boldly with the historic urban fabric around it, yet it maintains a respectful scale and footprint. Only the top floors are shaped like a pyramid, the lower three floors are actually slightly recessed, preventing it from appearing too imposing from street level. Another welcome effect of the vertical walls of the lower floors is that they reflect the surrounding buildings.
Böhm, known for his sculptural use of concrete and expressive forms in earlier works, embraced a radically different material language here, lightness instead of mass, glass instead of stone, but retained his characteristic sense of spatial drama. The transparency of the building is more than aesthetic: it reflects the library’s mission as an accessible, civic place for learning and encounter.
Stadtbibliothek Ulm
The Ulm city library was founded in 1516 when the Münster pastor Ulrich Krafft willed his collection to his townfolk. A structure was built to the north of the cathedral to house the library. In 1726, the library moved to the Schwörhaus, where it survived through wars, the destruction and eventual reconstruction of the edifice in 1954. The city library was originally focused on science and research, and so in 1896, the Volksbücherei was established to serve the broader public. The two libraries eventually merged in 1999.
A new building was however needed, as the combined collections were outgrowing the Schwörhaus, which they shared with other city services. The winning proposal of the architectural competition launched in 1998 failed to gather public support, and the city resolved instead to go with the third place project, that of Gottfried Böhm.
Completed in 2004, Böhm's library sits at one end of the Marktplatz, a few steps away from Ulm’s famous Gothic cathedral. The building’s crystalline form, with its sharp geometry and transparent skin of glass and steel, contrasts boldly with the historic urban fabric around it, yet it maintains a respectful scale and footprint. Only the top floors are shaped like a pyramid, the lower three floors are actually slightly recessed, preventing it from appearing too imposing from street level. Another welcome effect of the vertical walls of the lower floors is that they reflect the surrounding buildings.
Böhm, known for his sculptural use of concrete and expressive forms in earlier works, embraced a radically different material language here, lightness instead of mass, glass instead of stone, but retained his characteristic sense of spatial drama. The transparency of the building is more than aesthetic: it reflects the library’s mission as an accessible, civic place for learning and encounter.