AugustoGonzalez



In architecture, there are many factors to consider before doing a building, such as rhythm, materials, attractiveness to the eye, structure, circulation, beauty, great spaces, and so on. In this case, I am going to focus on the study of the circulation in this specific construction which is the Salt Lake City Library. As you may already know, or guess, there are two types of circulation: it can be either horizontal or vertical. The first one, is when you do not change level, meaning that you stay at the same height; it is ussually seen by halls. The vertical circulation is when you change the floor in which you are, you can go up or down and it is not necessary to say that you may have changed one meter in height, or fifty meters and it will still be a vertical circulation; it is quite obvious that there are only tree ways of accomplishing this: either using a stair, an elevator or a ramp. For example, you can use a stair to go to another floor or use an elevator to go several stories up or down.

Before going any further in my explanation, it is important that you know what the facade of the building is like so once you see pictures on the inside you do not get lost; this pictures are at the beginning. Now that you have seen the facade of the building and after explaining the different types of circulation, I´m going to describe how the circulation works in this building. To star I am going to talk about the horizontal circulation. From the following images we can see that the circulation is different in the first floor than in the other floors. In the first one, there is a huge space that because of its dimensions, it may be used for circulation or different functions. On the other floors, the path that is meant to be walked is clearly marked, and you can also see that it is the same on all the floors. In the upper floors there is a circulation which is following the curve of the building but only on the side of where the stairs are, which in the next picture is the left side. In the picture below that we can see that the circulation previously described is broken for a bridge witch communicates both sides of this building. Now, the vertical circulation of this building has a core on the stairs which are hard to miss. The architect makes a great gesture which is pulling the stairs outside and breaking the curved line to highlight them. The stairs are one above each other; it has happened that in some buildings, the stairs are alone and do not try to be an important role. It is hard for me to think that a building of this size does´t have an elevator somewhere, because to go up three or four floors using just your feet might get tiring, and in this construction it gives even more laziness to go upstairs because the space gives the illusion that three floors are higher than the average. After this analysis, I do not think there is much to say other than the horizontal circulation is great because it is well defined, the converging traffic points are well expressed and you can clearly tell when you are going to change level. The vertical circulation is also - almost - perfect (and I say almost because there is nothing perfect made by men), it is clear to see and you know exactly where you are going. So I like this project a lot and now I want to visit it. For all the other pictures, I must say that I do not think that the circulation is the only great aspect that this building has.