A New Landmark, A New Identity: The Westlake University Library | UAD China

On April 18, 2026, the Westlake University Library officially opened its doors. As the core landmark building of the entire campus, the Library has now embarked on its intended mission.2026年4月18日，西湖大学图书馆正式开放。作为整个校园的核心地标建筑，图书馆现已开始履行其既定使命。

The Library brings together the Main Library (floors 2–5), the History Exhibition Hall and Archives (ground floor), the AI Research Center (floors 6–7), and a tower. Located at the northwest end of the Science and Technology Island, the building anchors the campus's central precinct. It enters with the Academic Hall into a compositional dialogue—one square, one circular. Above, the 108-meter tower and the 80-meter Academic Exchange Center echo each other at the southeastern tip. Standing in visual counterpoint, they command sweeping views across the core campus from multiple vantage points.图书馆由主图书馆（2-5层）、历史展览馆和档案馆（一层）、人工智能研究中心（6-7层）以及一座塔楼组成。它位于科技岛西北端，是校园中心区域的核心建筑。图书馆与学术楼在建筑结构上形成对话——一个方形，一个圆形。在图书馆上方，108米高的塔楼和80米高的学术交流中心在东南角遥相呼应。它们彼此交相辉映，从多个角度都能俯瞰整个校园的核心区域。

A Learning Center That Defies Definition一个难以定义的学习中心

The modern university library has moved beyond the traditional model of mere book storage and reading. What emerges instead is a hybrid space for diverse learning, intelligent services, and human-centric care. It demands high functional density, diverse yet comfortable settings, spatial flexibility, and smart, efficient access to collections. Today, despite or perhaps because of the rise of e-books and the internet, the library's value as a university landmark has shifted. It now endures as a place of intellectual memory and social gathering in academic life. Faculty and students come here not just for books, but for a quiet corner to read, to pause, to take in a view—or to connect in the cloud, to huddle in group discussions, to lose themselves in salons. The library has, in a sense, become a multifunctional social learning hub for the university—a transformation that raises the bar for spatial experience and comfort, both inside and out. Through reconfiguring and extending the library's core functions, the design redefines interior and exterior spaces alike. Indeterminate transitional and shared zones are granted greater plasticity, giving rise to a future-oriented social space and learning center that defies definition.

Unique Outdoor Roaming Paths

Externally, the design aspires to create a three-dimensional space for learning and interaction befitting a new model of the modern university, while engaging in a landscape dialogue with the campus's Central Garden and the water ring to its northwest. The building's form responds to three pedestrian flows on the ground: the Central Garden to the south, Bridges 14 and 15 of the residential quarter to the west, and Bridge 17 to the north. At ground level, a series of large staircases aligned with these three directions converge and channel visitors upward to the Library's main entrance on the eastern second-floor terrace. Here, every moment of arriving at or departing from the Library offers a view skyward to the signature tower and outward to the Academic Hall and the Central Garden beyond. On the southern second-floor terrace, stairs continue the ascent along the southeastern side, leading up to an outdoor platform on the sixth floor. In fair seasons, this exterior path allows faculty and students to walk directly between levels, creating an ever-changing landscape experience while increasing the likelihood of chance encounters across disciplines. Perhaps the spark of cross-disciplinary fusion will be born right here, at this very moment.

To emphasize the verticality of the signature tower while avoiding any sense of compression from the Library's main volume along the north-south axis, the building's form, in conjunction with the exterior stepped walkways, naturally develops into a terraced composition that recedes from southeast to northwest. This strategy maximizes the creation of multiple ground levels and a 270-degree optimal view toward the Central Garden to the southeast. The Library's staggered tripartite form "three books in motion" thus emerges organically.

A Romantic Indoor Atrium Space

A nearly 35-meter-tall skylit atrium is inserted into the heart of the building. Together with the staggered exterior forms and the walking terraces that loop around the atrium at each level, natural light is drawn deep into the interior, striving to create a sense of the outdoors, indoors. A monumental functional stairway aligned with the east entrance draws visitors up to the third floor, where a straight-run staircase continues around the atrium, rising through the volume of the "second book" and terminating at the elevator lobby on the fifth floor. There, the indoor pedestrian flow meets the vertical circulation. Meanwhile, daylight pours in from the roof, casting shifting, dappled shadows across the floor and columns—an invitation that draws students and faculty upward, step by step. The result is an interior-exterior pedestrian system in constant interplay, one that amplifies the Library's spatial vitality and fosters open, learning-rich encounters.

On the sixth and seventh floors, the AI Research Center forms its own distinct volume—the "third book" at the top. Here, the white grille texture of the exterior architecture extends indoors, generating a strong sense of interlocking, staggered volumes. This stands in deliberate contrast to the wood-grain texture of the atrium on floors two through five, endowing each zone with a clearly legible functional identity. For researchers in the center, a daily glance through the glass toward the lively atrium area below may spark a new idea. Perhaps, when fatigue sets in, the thought of descending to the Library's lobby for a coffee, or finding a seat by the reading room window to watch the sunset and simply pause, becomes the best way to recharge and invite inspiration.在六楼和七楼，人工智能研究中心形成了一个独立的体量——位于顶层的“第三本书”。在这里，建筑外部的白色格栅纹理延伸至室内，营造出一种交错错落的体量感。这与二至五楼中庭的木纹纹理形成鲜明对比，赋予每个区域清晰的功能定位。对于中心的研究人员来说，每天透过玻璃眺望下方热闹的中庭，或许就能激发新的灵感。也许，当疲惫袭来时，想到下到图书馆大厅喝杯咖啡，或者在阅览室的窗边找个位置坐下，欣赏日落美景，静静地休憩片刻，便成了恢复精力、激发灵感的最佳方式。

The eight-story atrium is capped with a white grille screen at the seventh level, effectively concealing the glazed roof's steel structure and exposed mechanical systems. By day, it converts direct sunlight into diffused light, providing effective solar shading. By night, it works in tandem with an integrated concealed lighting system to illuminate the atrium. Here, the art and craft of architecture are perfectly fused, resulting in an interior atrium that is both pure and distinctive.这座八层高的中庭在七层上方加装了白色格栅屏风，巧妙地遮蔽了玻璃屋顶的钢结构和裸露的机械系统。白天，格栅屏风将直射阳光转化为漫射光，提供有效的遮阳效果。夜晚，它与内置的隐藏式照明系统协同工作，照亮整个中庭。在这里，建筑的艺术与工艺完美融合，打造出一个既纯粹又独具特色的室内中庭。

A Futuristic Tower一座未来主义塔楼

Kevin Lynch's five core elements from The Image of the City have long influenced architects in their master planning of university campuses. A campus is, in essence, a small town. When these five elements are fully engaged during the planning and design phase, the result can be an ideal, distinctive, and human-scaled university campus. The Westlake University Library has already embodied four of the five elements—paths, nodes, districts, and edges—whether through the surrounding Central Garden, waterways, and bridges, or through its own architectural form. The one element still missing: landmarks. The 108-meter signature tower, conceived as a structural landmark rather than a conventional building, took shape through multiple rounds of conceptual comparison. The final design adopts a staggered form reminiscent of a space shuttle, with three indoor-outdoor observation platforms at 30, 54, and 84 meters.凯文·林奇在其著作《城市意象》中提出的五大核心要素，长期以来一直影响着建筑师在大学校园总体规划中的实践。校园本质上就是一座小型城镇。如果在规划和设计阶段充分运用这五大要素，便可打造出一个理想、独特且以人为本的大学校园。西湖大学图书馆已体现了五大要素中的四项——路径、节点、区域和边缘——无论是通过环绕的中央花园、水道和桥梁，还是通过其自身的建筑形式。唯一缺失的要素是：地标。这座108米高的标志性塔楼，其设计理念并非传统意义上的建筑，而是一座结构性地标，历经多轮概念对比才最终成型。最终设计采用了类似航天飞机的交错式造型，并设有三个分别位于30米、54米和84米的室内外观景平台。

To heighten the tower's futuristic and technological character, the facade is clad in titanium. Titanium is not only highly self-cleaning but also possesses a natural character that never fades with time or sunlight, making it one of the most stable of all metals. Moreover, it reveals a unique luster and texture under changing weather conditions.为了凸显这座塔楼的未来感和科技感，其外立面采用了钛金属。钛金属不仅具有极佳的自清洁性能，而且其天然特性使其永不褪色，不受时间或阳光的影响，是所有金属中最稳定的材料之一。此外，钛金属在不断变化的气候条件下还会呈现出独特的光泽和纹理。

With its completion, the Westlake University Library not only becomes a new landmark on campus but also joins the Academic Ring and the Academic Hall to form a distinctive architectural cluster at the heart of the university, embodying an entirely new campus typology for a new kind of research university in China.西湖大学图书馆建成后，不仅成为校园内的新地标，而且与学术环和学术楼一起，在大学中心形成了一个独特的建筑群，体现了中国新型研究型大学全新的校园类型。