Stockholm Public Library

This guide to Stockholm Public Library follows two building stories at once: the rotunda's original 1928 construction, when architect Gunnar Asplund traded a coffered dome for a plain cylinder because the city's budget could not stretch to grandeur, and a 2006 international competition that drew over a thousand entries to replace the library with a glass tower. It traces how the winning design, chosen by the jury in 2007, moved from blueprints toward construction before the city's politics and finances turned against it. The west wing beside the rotunda was itself an afterthought, added only in 1932 once money allowed.