The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them
Libraries
Bibliothèque nationale de France – Paris
Sep 10th
Tres Grande Bibliotheque (TGB, or Very Large Library): just a code name for what was an urban and bureaucratic utopia before it took shape in the form of an actual building. Certainly the most emblematic of President Francois Mitterrand’s “Grands projets”, it was bound to be the ultimate library, an innovative tool for culture, education, and archiving. It was meant to break new ground in a derelict industrial area and to initiate a new urbanity.
Dominique Perrault, an architect who had built a mere fraction of the square feet allocated for the TGB, won the international competition. His scheme was simple: readers and researchers would use a secluded garden dug into the ground and open onto the sky, topped by a wooden deck, flanked by four book-shaped corner storage towers. More >
Usera Library – Madrid
Sep 8th
This public library in Usera, a southern suburb of Madrid, suggests a building in mythology: a golden tower, it has the appearance of the object of a quest. Its seductive power stems partly from its simple elegance and partly from the fact that it is intuitively understood as a sanctuary. That a cheap municipal building can be one of such symbolic potential is a real testament to its architects, the Madrid-based practice of Abalos & Herreros.
The tower – a form picked for its associations with learning – is a work of striking economy, as well as deception. It is actually only four storeys high, not counting mezzanine floors, but the way the slender windows are ranked disguises this. Further, the facade continues upward one storey beyond the roof to make the building seem taller than it is. More >
Massachusetts Thomas Crane Library
Sep 4th
Henry Richardson was a big man in every sense. He had more influence than any other American architect of his generation and his distinctive and massive style, at once historical and personal – ‘Richardsonian Romanesque’ – was much imitated during what Lewis Mumford, the writer and urbanist, called the ‘Brown Decades’ of the later 19th century. With Richardson, American architecture comes of age.
Richardson trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the American Civil War, but his tailor was in London and so he knew the latest work of English Gothic Revival architects as well as being familiar with Ruskin’s ideas about ornament, colour and the importance of the integrity of the masonry wall. More >
Barking Central Library – London
Sep 2nd
This east end library is not for the faint of heart. Built for the borough of Barking and Dagenham, the brightly coloured, unorthodox project includes the expansion and renovation of an existing mid-century library and the creation of two huge housing blocks above it.
The work was part of an ambitious plan to remake and enliven most of the once-depressed area. The second phase of the Barking redevelopment plan will include the eventual construction of a new office tower, two more residential buildings, and a wooded square. More >
Peckham Library – London
Aug 21st
South London’s Peckham Library displays Will Alsop’s characteristic taste for the bizarre. But its strangest elements are also its most effective and what have helped make the library a centrepiece for regeneration in this economically depressed area.
Thin, angled columns support the L-shaped, four-storey building as it cantilevers far over its own urban plaza. This formation creates what Alsop calls ‘an urban umbrella’ where people naturally congregate. The space, which feels like a void in the building because its dark colouring contrasts with the irregular patinated green copper cladding on the facade, has become one of the area’s central meeting points. More >
