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BJÖRN LINN: The library and the city. A model and a moral.
ANNE GRØNLI: The library during the Age of Enlightenment.
ARNDÍS S. ÁRNADÓTTIR: From a cottage to a palace.
Nineteenth century library architecture and design in Iceland.
NAN DAHLKILD:
The library at the National Exhibition in Århus 1909.
JAN RISTARP: Is democracy visible on the outside?
SVEIN ENGELSTAD: The Georg Sverdrup Building:
the Temple of Knowledge or an Internet café?
ANNIKA SWEDÉN & PER AHRBOM:
The new library of the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
MARITA TURPEINEN: ARALIS - the library centre at Arabia Strand.
BJÖRN LINN: The library and the city. A model and a moral.
The library and the city - the latter on the classical block scheme - are organized around structural patterns of striking similarity.
A city plan on the gridiron principle is like a set of book-shelves laid out flat, with the blocks like compartments for the ordered insertion of buildings/books.
This kind of ordering embodies a pattern characteristic of our culture, with important properties for its use. If you have a definite aim in view,
then specific units can be sought out with the help of a map or register; or you may go on a trip of discovery, being open to what you may find.
In the latter case, the outcome will be facilitated by the amount of information which the exteriors offer and the degree of openness in the units themselves.
The similarity of the library to a city with streets, blocks and a square is apparent.
The library thus functions as a very effective metaphor and standard for the city. By comparison, it points out how fatal the last few decades have been for the qualities of the city. Its openness and the ease of orientation it offers to the visitor have been drastically curtailed. Buildings are locked up, and one is not free to choose a street leading in the desired direction. This has not been caused solely by any general autocratic policy, such as was the target of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, but even more by the gradual addition of the democratic society's own defence measures against different kinds of disturbances from traffic, from criminals, etc. The library, as the foremost symbol of the open society, points a moral to the modern city.
A hermetically closed library gives a powerful message that something is seriously amiss with society. The metaphor has been used in two recent monuments, one of them the memorial of the first Nazi burning of books in the Berlin Opernplatz in 1933, built by the Israeli artist Micha Ullmann as a subterranean chamber with empty bookshelves visible through a glass slab in the pavement and inaugurated in 1995 (fig.). The site is the present Bebelplatz in Berlin. The other monument is the Holocaust memorial in the Judenplatz in Vienna, shaped as a library cast in concrete with the walls cut away, so that the "books" are visible but impossible to take out and open. This was carried out by the British artist Rachel Whiteread and inaugurated in 2000. The irrevocable closeness of the books mediates a strong feeling of finality and death. <Back to list of content
ANNE GRØNLI: The library during the Age of Enlightenment.
This article discusses the idea of libraries in the Age of Enlightenment in France. Today, the World Wide Web
offers direct access to much of the world's knowledge. In his short story The Library of Babel, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges
writes about an enormous limitless library, capable of taking care of all future written publications. This idea goes even further back in history,
to 1771, when the French writer Louis Sébastien Mercier in his novel L'an 2440 describes a visit to a library where all the world's knowledge
is compressed into only a few books. This comprises the essence of knowledge. Some questions arise. How was one to keep up with
the enormous amount of written material generated during the Age of Enlightenment? Until the 18th century, the physical limitations of buildings
had restricted the availability of books; how did the intellectuals aim to resolve the new demands of the Age of Enlightenment which stimulated
the activities of writing and publishing? How could a building accommodate all the new material? What was the function of architecture?
What were the possibilities and limitations? How could one reconcile functional requirements with the aesthetic demands of the time, and finally,
how could the new ideas of universality be expressed in architecture? This article approaches these problems, the point of departure being a
project for a new royal library in Paris, designed by the French revolutionary architect Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728-99).
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ARNDÍS S. ÁRNADÓTTIR: From a cottage to a palace.
Nineteenth century library architecture and design in Iceland.
Under the rule of Norway since 1262 and Denmark since late fourteenth-century a strong movement for national rights took place
during the 1840s in Iceland, followed by a period of "national awakening". The period saw for example the establishment of the
National Museum (1863), the National Archives (1882) and the National Gallery (1884). By that time libraries, however,
were established cultural institutions in the country, the National Library founded in 1818 as well as numerous reading and
progressive societies that were spread across the mostly rural society. Actual library architecture was nonexistent until the period
1864-81 when three separate buildings were erected in Iceland, originally designed to house library collections.
By examining the reconstructed Flatey Book Barn (Bókhlaƒan í Flatey, 1864), the Reykjavík Latin School Book Barn (Bókhlaƒan ͆aka, 1866-67) and the ground floor of the Althing building (Al†ingishúsiƒ, 1880-81) the author argues that some contemporary reform developments in library architecture, library safety measures and interior design, then in vogue in the neighbouring countries, including Denmark, also appeared to some extent in these buildings. The conclusion is that the first "modern" library, the Latin School Book Barn, was built already in 1867 and a little over a decade later, a more spacious and elaborate library interior, than hitherto known in the country, had been designed. At the same time the role of the local craftsman and designer became increasingly important in the design process. <Back to list of content
NAN DAHLKILD:
The library at the National Exhibition in Århus 1909.
At the ARLIS/Norden conference 2000 in Stockholm, an interesting exhibition was shown with plans of Swedish libraries,
including the Dickson Library in Gothenburg. This library was built in 1897 with inspiration from American public libraries.
Danish public libraries in new buildings were established some years later. However, at the National Exhibition in Århus in 1909
a special exhibition library was built as part of a small "cultural centre" in an exhibition of an ideal small Danish town.
Good architecture, good design and good reading were consciously promoted at the same time in the same building as
part of a greater "folk enlightenment" project. The exhibition library inspired the development of public libraries in Denmark.
As an example, the public library of the small town Vejen in rural Jutland also inspired other libraries.
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JAN RISTARP: Is democracy visible on the outside?
The paper discusses the significance of the exterior of a public building, for example a library, in expressing how the institution
wants to be looked upon. Libraries of earlier periods often very clearly gave a full expression to the supremacy and total authority
of the reigning power already in their exterior. They had nothing at all to do with free reading for all and everyone. Today we
regard libraries as totally democratic institutions. But unfortunately, a couple of the major new national libraries of Europe
in their exterior demonstrate remnants from an architectural language of arrogance and exclusivity. In arguing for a clear coherence
between the openness of the activities of a library in our modern society and its architecture, the paper points at some prominent
new Swedish libraries where the democracy can be seen from the outside.
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SVEIN ENGELSTAD: The Georg Sverdrup Building:
the Temple of Knowledge or an Internet café?
The new library building has been named for Georg Sverdrup, a professor of Classical Studies at the University of Oslo and
the university's first library director in 1811. The final decision to build a new university library in Oslo was made in 1992.
The new building was planned to house the main administration and the Library for Humanities and Social Sciences.
The architectural contest was won by the architect Are Telje. The building occupies a space of approximately
30,000 m2 (275,000 square feet). There is 25,000 metres of open shelves on five different floors, holding 800,000 volumes of books.
There is a further 60,000 metres of shelves in closed stacks underground, with a capacity to hold nearly 2 million volumes.
The building is designed in a post-modern and late functionalistic style, with reference to different periods and styles.
The big red back-wall and the contrasting colours of white, yellow and black, combined with an extended use of squares,
can be traced back to constructivism and Bauhaus in the 1920s and 30s. The accomplished use of birch wood in the interiors
is reminiscent of the 'Scandinavian design' of the 1950s. The monumental façade with its giant columns refers back to classical
temples. The use of travertine and white marble likewise maintains the association to Antiquity, whereas the heavy use of glass
and black granite as a coating on the façade again takes you back to the present time. The library was officially inaugurated on
September 6, 1999.
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ANNIKA SWEDÉN & PER AHRBOM:
The new library of the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
The authors have for some time been working together on the planning of the new Library of the Royal Institute of Technology
(KTHB). In the present paper they present their wishes and intentions from the perspective of the librarian and the architect
respectively.
The Institute was founded in 1862 and moved into its present buildings in 1917. The architect was Erik Lallerstedt who also designed the two wings in one of which the library was located in the early 1930s. The need for increased space for the growing collections and activities resulted in an addition to the building in 1960. In the early 1990s a discussion of the library's future role and need for more space was initiated. Important aspects in the planning of the new library have been the development of information technology, the large increase in the number of students and the changed views on teaching and the learning environment. The physical placing of the new Learning Lab in the Library is also of major significance.
A new library building has to meet the needs of this new situation. Flexibility is an important requirement, allowing for a continuous adjustment to a constantly changing environment in which printed books and journals are gradually being replaced by digital publications. The building which is now being erected takes up the original idea by Erik Lallerstedt with a series of courtyards. The existing structures, two perpendicular buildings with an triangular court in between, make up the starting point for the new library. The buildings have dominating towers, connecting to the West with two tall chimneys. Below is the Steam Dome, a big tall room, originally used for the Institute heating plant. Facing the South is the water tower, a lean tower of six storeys. The old buildings will be adapted to the new requirements of the library and be combined with a new additional building with a steel structure, cement floors and a glass façade. The Library and the Learning Lab will get an entirely new interior design, with three major pieces of artistic decoration. <Back to list of content
MARITA TURPEINEN: ARALIS - the library centre at Arabia Strand.
The University of Art and Design Library is changing to an information centre for the new millennium, with the cooperation of the
Helsinki Polytechnic Library, the Department of Art and Media, the Library of Pop & Jazz Conservatory and the Toukola City
Library. Together these libraries will form the ARALIS Library and Information Centre, a network in design, media and culture.
The centre will serve enterprises, students, researchers, teachers and inhabitants of the Arabia Strand area. The ARALIS library
will function as a national and international centre of art.
The University of Art and Design established a project in 1999 to plan the space, services, budget and data communications for the new library centre. The ARALIS project group presented their plan in January 2000. Planning for the building and the equipment needed for the new information centre is now underway as is consultation with the architects and construction firms. The ARALIS centre will be ready to function in the year 2003. <Back to list of content