The design centers on a system of arcades that join together generating the individual volumes of the building. The non-standard geometry of these arcades creates an organic experience of space and light bringing together the exterior and interior as one environment. This icon in the center of the Istanbul Technical University Campus envisions a future where information, man, and nature is joined together as one. GAD’s design is a modular and algorithmic system based on the idea of rising stairs.

Following an iterative geometric order, shelves from 30×30 cm, 45×45 cm, 60×60 cm, etc., are stacked and combined to create hybrid structures and programmatic volumes that define rooms and openings for circulation such as door frames. The interior is in this way a hybrid mix of structure and shelving, resulting in fluidity for open space to all students at all times.

The most rigid and permanent dimension in the architecture is that of the stair riser with a dimension of 15x30cm and its multiples that serves as the basis for the size of all of the other elements in an expansive organic structure.

The ancient libraries of the east from Alexandria to Suleymaniye to Constantinople were centers of information and knowledge that are the source for our concept of this library as a new icon of knowledge. Students and library users enter into this immersive experience picking their path through the library to discover data and information from GAD’s design of the algorithmic structure of arcades. Overall this experience of the new library buildings seeks to open up the Istanbul Technical University Library into becoming an innovative zone of expansive form and structure to a 21st-century idea of organic knowledge.