The Metropolitan Sheptytsky Center, Ukrainian Catholic University Lviv

The UCU’s mission is to provide an open, progressive, and democratic learning environment for its students and the surrounding community. The UCU wants to serve as a role model for higher education in post-soviet Ukraine by making a private university accessible to the public.

Openness plays a major role in the design of the building. This concept is reflected in the barrier-free ground floor. Upon entering, the building immediately reveals itself through a sense of transparency, spatial clarity, and logic organization. In this central zone, where the main stairwell is located, all key functions come together in a space that invites sitting, enables meetings, and offers views of the park, book stacks, study areas, and seminar spaces. The reading, exhibition and conference areas as well as a café and the university bookshop are located here.

The upper levels are more academic in nature, featuring open-stack collections, various reading spaces, quiet study zones, and group work rooms. Both the public and academic spaces are flexible and organized around a vertical atrium that always affords views out to the beautiful Stryiskyi Park located adjacent to the campus.

Although the design had to deal with the active climate control requirements typical of libraries, it prioritized passive measures to enhance user comfort while reducing energy consumption. These included strategically placed glazing in bookstack areas, passive shading systems on fully glazed facades, and light re-directing louvers on select windows. The building also features exclusive use of triple glazing and LED lighting—a first for a modern building in Ukraine.

The facades are constructed of rear-ventilated aluminum composite panels with a metallic finish, folded into three-dimensional forms that reflect the colors of the surroundings. As a result, the building’s appearance shifts with the viewing angle and time of day.