The new National Library and University of Ljubljana (NUK2), a result of the competition for the enlargement of that built in the 1930s by Jože Plečnik, will rise over the remains of the ancient Roman city of Emona. By respecting the site’s original axes (Cardo and Decumanus), the architects use this archaeological context in planning the functional organization of the project. In its implantation in the urban fabric, the library works as a new node in the fragmented university campus of a capital which it connects to through its two public squares. With a height of 30 meters, the building is divided into three free-access floor levels, two for offices and three for storage, all placed around an open central space that recalls the ‘Piranesian’ space of the classical reading room of the old library...[+][+]