I have lived five minutes away from it, since the week after it opened in 2015. Have done a ton of uni work at there, as I didn't want to ride my bike up the hill on to AU. It was the convenient option - not the best option.

In my experience, the building actually mostly functions a citizen service center for the municipality, where you can get passports/driver's licenses renewed, get your pension, move address etc. At least if you look at what the majority of people are there for, and not that department's footprint in the building. I could be wrong, but it sure feels that way.

To me, Dokk1 is a big bulding that happens to also hold books. With embarrassingly scarce proper seating and not a lot of either peace nor quiet. The building's cool and all, but as a library, functionally, I don't think it should be even on a top 100. Where are you supposed to read/work? Five tiny(!) private group study rooms for a city with more than 50k students. When kids run around screaming upstairs/on the ramp, or there's an event going on in the open, that's not enough if you want to have a great library imo.

Sure, you can get books, and if you're lucky, they even have the one you're looking for on hand, and not at one of their 10 other/old branches in some suburb, as they have only one copy between them all. They usually can get it to their branch within a day or two.

I'd like to know the real reason it won a prize as a library, because it would be odd to me, if it wasn't simply the architecture, that was commended.

Edit: I sound ranty. I guess I had some real dog shit days there the last few times, trying to study there for exams, so that's probably why. Shit seats, loud kids, and a Street Fighter tournament taking over the whole ramp area at 15.30 on a Thursday, when all students in the city were studying for their exams. Everyone looked pissed.