The City Council awards the furniture for the new eight-story library at Mirador del Carmen

The Consistory also tendered and awarded the technological and audiovisual equipment for the Library of Contemporary Cultures, which will become a benchmark for its modernity and the numerous services it will provide to users.

The Estepona City Council is moving forward in the implementation of the future Library of Contemporary Cultures with the awarding of the furniture. The material will begin to be installed in the coming weeks in the new equipment, which will be located in the Mirador del Carmen and will have eight floors.

The provision of furniture has involved an investment of 290,975 euros (VAT included), which will be funded through the Tourism Sustainability Plan ‘In Destination’ of the Junta de Andalucía. The successful bidders for the four lots of materials that were put out to tender are Ofiburo S.L, Ofi-Net Europa S.L and Fuertes Santamarta S.C.

In addition to the furniture, the Consistory also tendered several lots to provide the building with the necessary technological means to carry out the services of digital library, cultural events, as well as to provide specific didactic and leisure elements for children and young people.

The contract includes the acquisition of modern audiovisual equipment consisting of sound equipment for podcasting (microphones, headphones, production station), a wireless communication system for conferences, a system for listening to music, sound and media for a movie theater, television screens for use in conferences and information panels, a screen for video game consoles, a multipurpose television, projectors and LED signage.

Due to the special characteristics of the library, which will be a modern and innovative cultural center of reference in southern Europe, the acquisition and installation of digital screens for consultation, wifi access points, computers, tablets, video game consoles and virtual reality glasses has also been contemplated.

The Library of Contemporary Cultures has been designed as a transversal, dynamic and future-oriented cultural center oriented to people’s needs. For this reason, it has been equipped with the most advanced technology and resources, so that its eight floors offer citizens a complete range of uses. Thus, it will have a studio for recording podcasts, voices and radio programs, but also a makespace area (new media, digital printing and digital scenery), workshop area, audiovisual room, gamer area, virtual reality, coworking spaces for working groups, and for initiation to robotics. It will also have a documentation area specialized in the sea and the environment, with a specialized catalog on this subject.

The Mirador del Carmen library is designed for the user to live a unique experience when visiting it every day, so that it becomes an extension of their home, which can live the cultural and technological space.

The library will consist of eight floors of the tower building. The first two floors will be independent areas dedicated to children and young people, and will not be connected to each other. From the third floor up to the eighth floor, it will be connected inside by a staircase that creates an effect of space in height.

Thus, the second floor, dedicated to the children’s area, will be for children from 1 to 12 years of age. In the area there will be children’s books cataloged according to age range, educational games, children’s cabins, and space for parents to be comfortable and work on the computer if they need to.

The second floor has been designed as the Future Zone, a multi-purpose space for users between the ages of 13 and 18. It will be a meeting room for teenagers to work in groups, individually, study, read or watch audiovisual content. It will consist of seats connected to each other in the form of bleachers. On this floor there will be a ‘gamer’ area, video games, virtual reality and a catalog of books of juvenile literature and comics. There will also be tablets for digital consultation.

The third floor is dedicated to consultation and newspaper library, with a reading, study and rest area. This room will have a bookshelf/center of interest called New Expressions, which will focus on new contemporary narratives (literature, art, music and film), which will dialogue with other areas of the center. There will also be shelves for novelties and another for specialized magazines.

The room dedicated to study and research will be located on floor 4, specializing in the sea and the environment, with access to the digital and physical catalog specializing in this area. On the fifth floor there will be a coworking area, a space that can be reserved by work groups, whether students, researchers or workers.

Floors 6 and 7 will be study and workshop areas. They will also have a tiered area where workshops, conferences and courses can be offered, which will be very sensitive to the different groups in the city, so that they can be used for social development.

The top floor of the library will be a special space where audiovisual, cinema, music and radio will coexist. There will be a booth for podcast, voice and radio recordings. There will be seats with their built-in tablet so that the user can listen to music in a program that Spotify will design for the Mirador del Carmen, attending to the programming of the exhibition hall and the conservatory.