UNDIP University Library Redesign

Keep the building, rethink how people use it. A redesign of the UNDIP library from the inside: how students enter, browse, sit and leave, where the daylight falls, and where they can work together.

Context

University libraries were designed for silence and storage; students now use them for group work, laptops and long days. In 2020, as a studio project in my architecture degree at Diponegoro University, I took the UNDIP library as a live case: keep the building, rethink how people move through it, where the light enters and where students can work together.

I did this as a student designer, working from the existing building rather than a blank site.

The design

This is a conceptual redesign; the library was not rebuilt. The work covered:

• A study of occupant traffic flow and a revised plan aimed at removing the friction points in how people enter, browse, sit and leave.
• Interior spatial drafting that reorganises the floor plates around reading zones and group-study hubs.
• Openings and interior layouts arranged to bring more daylight into the reading areas.
• Student collaboration hubs treated as destinations in the plan, not leftover corners.
• Plans, sections and visualisations for the studio review.

Results

• Completed and reviewed in 2020, and listed among the key projects of my degree alongside the resort hotels in Guci (2020) and Jepara (2021).
• The clearest example in my portfolio of working within an existing building rather than designing a new one.

Lessons

Reorganising space is cheaper than adding it. Most of the improvement in a scheme like this comes from moving functions and opening sightlines, not from new floor area. I also learned that circulation is a design tool in itself: where a corridor bends decides where people meet, and a library's value today is partly in those meetings.