002 — 40.6664° N, 16.6043° E
Cultural · Completed
The Limestone Archive
A cliff of vertical stone fins shelters a regional archive carved partly into the hillside.
01Concept
Memory needs a stable climate. The archive borrows the cool constancy of the earth and wraps it in stone fins that turn glare into a slow, striped light.
Brief
A fire-safe, climate-stable home for 4 km of regional records, with public reading rooms and a courtyard.
02Design challenges / Design solutions
Design challenges
Holding 18 °C and 50% humidity with minimal mechanical plant.
Design solutions
Archive vaults sit inside the hill; stone mass buffers every temperature swing.
Design challenges
A protected hillside that forbids visible new roofs.
Design solutions
The roof is a planted terrace continuous with the slope, so the building reads as a cut, not an object.
03Image sequence
04Material palette
Limestone
Honed
Weathered steel
Pre-patinated
Smoked oak
Oiled, matt
05Project in numbers
- 3200 m²
- Area
- 38 months
- Duration
- 4 km
- Archive shelving
- 312
- Stone fins
- 68 %
- Annual cooling energy saved
06Design team
Fictional studio. All content is illustrative demo material.
Elias Varga
Founding Principal
Mateo Ruiz
Head of Material Research
Sana Okafor
Associate Architect
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