Stockholm Public Library

Stockholm Public Library is a tall cylinder on a low square block, and little else. Gunnar Asplund, who sat on the planning committee from 1918, started with a dome and gave it up. He took the classical orders and pared them back to their basic geometry until hardly any ornament was left. The building, opened on 31 March 1928, marks his turn from classicism towards functionalism.

The change inside was just as large. This was the first public library in Sweden where readers could take books from open shelves without asking the staff, an arrangement Asplund studied in the United States while the building went up. Every piece of furniture was designed for its room and its place in that room.

Money ran short, so the library opened unfinished. The west wing, which closes the square around the rotunda, came in 1932. Asplund also laid out the park to the south with its large pond, completed in 1931. His influence travelled: Charles Holden’s Arnos Grove station on the London Underground is said to be based on the library.

An international competition for an extension in 2006 drew 1,170 entries, and in 2007 the German architect Heike Hanada won with a glass tower joined to the old building by a low podium. The project was halted in 2009, after a change of city government and a campaign against its effect on Asplund’s complex.

The stripped-down classicism here is an early step on the road we trace in why modern libraries look nothing like old ones. The library holds more than 1.5 million books. It closed for renovation in 2024 and is due to reopen in 2028.