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.

You're right! I've lived close to this place since 2015, and have written ton of assignments, sitting in this building. They placed the children's zone close to the gong, which is a common thing in Danish libraries. I guess because it's not going to be completely quiet in that area anyways. In my experience though, the gong rarely gongs(?) and has been offline for longer periods of time. During 100+ hours spent in that building, I've heard it less than five times.