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In Hefei, China, SZ-Architects transform a former prison guard tower into A Very Small 24-hour Bookstore—a 70 m² reading room that stays open and unguarded for the neighborhood.
In the Hechai 1972 park in Hefei, a small building that once watched over a prison compound now holds nothing but books and daylight. SZ-Architects discovered the abandoned guard tower by chance while visiting the site for an unrelated project, and proposed turning it into what they call a Very Small Bookstore—a 24-hour reading room, open and unguarded, in deliberate contrast to its former life.
The concept has a quiet lineage. The original Very Small Bookstore, by the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, operates on a principle of radical openness: "its books come from personal collections and donations, its walls are covered with handwritten postcards, and its staff consists of four adopted stray cats." Rather than a commercial destination, it functions as a social archive shaped by its visitors. This Hefei branch carries the same philosophy into a structure that once represented the opposite of openness.
The engineering challenge was considerable. Built in 1997, the tower had no surviving drawings, requiring new geotechnical and structural assessments before anything could begin. The architects reinforced the four corner columns with steel hoops, strengthened the second-floor slab, and enlarged the roof beam cross-sections. Then came the key move: a suspended structural system. Eight C-shaped channel sections were laid across the reinforced roof beams, extending outward to create circulation paths and a seated reading area. Paired back-to-back into H-sections, they clamp solid steel hanger rods that drop vertically to matching channels beneath the second floor—so the new floors literally hang from the roof, minimizing load on the aging structure.
Two high-voltage cable lines running too close to the west side forced a rotation of the roof, which was then trimmed at four corners to produce a distinctive four-leaf clover silhouette. Inside, bookshelves line all four walls where low window sills once stood. Reading desks are integrated into the primary steel structure, combining the logic of scaffolding with the delicacy of stainless-steel suspension rods. Sliding windows at the building’s four corners open to unobstructed views of the park.
There is something moving in the architects’ closing note: "Although the walls are blank for now, with time we hope they will once again be covered with little cards, because the sincere words on those cards are the hope in everyone’s heart." A building that once enforced containment now waits, patiently, to be filled by the people around it.
