Located on Via Vittorio Veneto, within the residential area in the city center of Maranello, the library, distributed over approximately 1000 m2, takes the place of a pre-existing building whose traces can still be found as the northern, eastern and southern exterior walls. These walls are covered with ivy, which along with the reflecting pools at the foot of the glazed perimeter make up the new natural horizons that are offered to the readers and patrons of the library. The building houses diverse environments: a record/video library, a playroom, a study hall, the municipal archives, an exhibition space that can be used for temporary installations, and reading rooms that can seat 90. Each of these reading spaces targets a specific type of reader: adults, adolescents and children.
The program of the building is distributed over two floors. The curvilinear shape of the library contains on the ground floor a transparent volume that houses the cafeteria, the exposition spaces for a local cultural association, and the main room for consultation and reading. On the southern edge of the library, an opaque volume -white like the librarycontains the services and staircases that lead to the basement and to the playroom.
Regarding the atmosphere, the lighting articulation, material purity and the vitality of the landscape that surrounds the library, Andrea Maffei wrote: The volume is mirrored on a body of water that reflects the intense color of the ivy onto the surrounding walls and surfaces. A canopy juts out onto the public spaces which creates a unique form that renders the architecture recognizable even from the street.
In the interior of the building the absolute white resin pavement and white furniture captures the green hues of the greenery that is reflected from the continuous glazed surfaces of the curvilinear faade. The light that pervades the open space of the library is exhibited in a play of reflections that bounce from the white elements of the furniture, the floors and structure, to the water and the continuous transparent glass.