Libraries and Their Architecture in the 21st Century 9783110689433, 9783110689501, 9783110689549, 2021930701

Table of contents :
Contents
I Introduction
Fig. 1-2
Architecture is not enough
Editorial – Libraries in the 21st Century
From a Library of Objects to a Library of Interactions
II Awakening the Knowledge Society – The Role of Library Architecture
Fig. 1-2
More Kitchen than Grocery Store
Libraries of the Future: A Singapore Case Study
Spaces for Books – Places for People
Celebrating Knowledge and Scientific Workout
Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society
Libraries Architecture and Innovation
III Building for the Knowledge Society – The Creation of Library Architecture
Fig. 1. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana 1571. Attribution: Sailko
New Developments of Library Buildings Worldwide
Designing for Evolution
Engaging Architecture
Spaces for People
Public Space becomes Cultural Place
Places to Study, Flirt and Stroll: Max Dudler’s Libraries
The New Central Library in Dresden’s Kulturpalast
IV Future Talk
Six Questions on Libraries and Their Architecture
V Profiles of Authors
VI Special Thanks

Citation preview

Libraries and Their Architecture in the 21st Century

Libraries and Their Architecture in the 21st Century Edited by Ines Miersch-Süß

ISBN 978-3-11-068943-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-068950-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-068954-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021930701 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Cover illustration: Qatar National Library, Courtesy UNIFOR Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents I Introduction Architecture is not enough   5 Editorial – Libraries in the 21st Century   7 From a Library of Objects to a Library of Interactions 

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II Awakening the Knowledge Society – The Role of Library Architecture More Kitchen than Grocery Store   20 Achim Bonte, Saxon State and University Library Dresden Libraries of the Future: A Singapore Case Study  Catherine Lau, National Library Board Singapore Spaces for Books – Places for People  Max Dudler, Max Dudler Architects

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Celebrating Knowledge and Scientific Workout  Georg Gewers, Gewers Pudewill Architects

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Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society  Werner Frosch, Henning Larsen Architects Libraries Architecture and Innovation  Ines Miersch-Süß, MSAO Architects

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III Building for the Knowledge Society – The Creation of Library Architecture New Developments of Library Buildings Worldwide  Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux, Humboldt University Berlin Designing for Evolution   114 Elif Tinaztepe, Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects

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Engaging Architecture   132 Jette Cathrin Hopp, Snøhetta Architects Spaces for People   152 Marco Muscogiuri, Politecnico di Milano dABC Public Space becomes Cultural Place   166 Lina Lahiri, Sauerbruch Hutton Architects Places to Study, Flirt and Stroll   180 Max Dudler, Max Dudler Architects The New Central Library in Dresden’s Kulturpalast   198 Stephan Schütz, gmp · von Gerkan, Marg und Partners Architects

IV Future Talk Six Questions on Libraries and Their Architecture   212 A Conversation between Claudia Lux, Oliver Jahn, Dante Bonuccelli

V Profiles of Authors  VI Special Thanks 

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I Introduction Architecture is not enough Libraries in the 21st Century – Editorial Curators Review of the 1st International Library Summit in Venice in 2019

Fig. 1: Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux in her element: unstoppable engagement for the library. © MSAOFUTUREFOUNDATION

To Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux for her assistance, support and encouragement on a long journey.

Fig. 2: The Newtonian pendulum © dkimages. Kugelspiel It embodies the philosphy of the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION: “We give the impetus, we bring people together and projects into life”.

Architecture is not enough The MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION for future design is the international forum and social commitment of MSAO MIERSCH SUESS ARCHITECTURAL OFFICES. The Foundation devotes her work to the topics of international understanding, urban planning, and architecture, as well as innovation and the future. In cooperation with a six-member board of trustees, young future curators, many cooperation partners, and supporters, the foundation develops projects from first concept to implementation. The foundation was founded in 2017 and is based in Dresden / Saxony. The MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION organizes forums, publishes, and advises organizations on forward-looking topics. As engineers, we want to be in the center of society and set an anchor, understand people and their needs, and provide answers. Being close to society, bringing urgent future issues to everyday life, this is the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION and our engagement beyond architecture. The Foundation’s work field of urban planning and architecture is characterized by questions about the role of architecture and its responsibility for society and its changes. Libraries are probably for this very reason one of the first architectures to attract the attention of the foundation. Over two years, libraries have been one of the most important program items of our foundation’s work. We were fascinated by the realization that libraries as institutions initiate the enlightenment of the twenty-first century by reflecting on their role in the future and being pioneers of change and renewal. This is how the International Library Summit came into being with projects and guests from 20 nations. We wanted to bring together more of the diversity of international, innovative library buildings, and their makers of architecture and library management in a discussion about the library and its architecture in the twenty-first century. We hosted this first International Library Summit in the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary year of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice. In addition to the topics of art, architecture, dance, film, and theater promoted by the Biennale of Venice, with the International Library Summit in 2019 we also brought the medium of KNOWLEDGE to Venice. The first book of the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION, “Libraries and Their Architecture in the 21st Century”, takes the importance of KNOWLEDGE for society into account. Ines Miersch-Süß, President of the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION www.msaofuturefoundation.de

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-001

Fig. 1: View from the eights floor of Qatar Foundation Headquarters. © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

Fig. 2,3: Preview of the Qatar National Library during the Qatar Germany Cultural Year 2017 with Claudia Lux, Ines Miersch-Süß and friends. © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

Editorial – Libraries in the 21st Century “In the 21st century, we are moving towards a knowledge society. In addition to the growing influence of data and artificial intelligence, human intelligence is becoming much more important.” – Ines Miersch-Süß –

How this Book came into being The first impulses for this book go back to an event in the middle of the Qatar German Cultural Year 2017, which focused on the new Qatar National Library, which was about to open. At this time, the German library expert Claudia Lux was the project manager for the construction of the new National Library in Doha for the Qatar Foundation. I met Claudia Lux between 2009 and 2011 during our time together in Berlin in the project Berliner Schloss Humboldtforum. At this time Claudia Lux was the Director General of the Central and State Library of Berlin and I was the Project Manager responsible for the interior design development of the Humboldtforum, dispositive in the exhibitions of the Staatliche Museen Berlin. The many interfaces between use and architecture were the starting point of our encounter in Berlin and brought us together again in Qatar from 2015. Right at our first re-meeting at the Doha Book Fair in December 2015, we resumed our talks and intensified them during my business stays in Qatar between 2015 and 2018. Our discussions focused on library architecture, Qatar Vision 2030, and the activities of the Qatar Foundation. The Qatar German Cultural Year 2017 finally gave us a cultural occasion and the opportunity to realize our intentions of an event where we would present the ideas of architecture and the library to a broad international as well as Qatari audience. With the permission of the Qatar Foundation, one year before the official opening in 2018, we organized this event as a preview of the Qatar National Library. In the early morning of May 20, 2017, the time had come. We started our tour at the Qatar Foundation headquarters on the visitor’s terrace on the eighth floor. From here, you have an excellent view of the Education City, which reflects the Qatar Foundation’s large-scale master plan for Science, Education and Community development. What made me curious from the beginning was this new pun, Community Development. Community Development is being mentioned in the same breath as education and science. Community, Education, and Science are the basic themes of all the so-called Capital Projects of the Qatar Foundation. With Community Building, the Qatar Foundation sets a benchmark for renewal and in this context stands the new Qatar National Library, an architecture for Education, Science, and Community development. “In Qatar everything begins with friendship” was therefore the claim of our preview of the new Qatar National Library, which was still under construction. This event, its motto, and the enthusiasm of the people we brought together, their indescribably https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-002

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Fig. 4: Qatar National Library from the Bridge, Courtesy UniFor, main sponsor of the 1st International Library Summit in Venice i 2019

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great interest and the shared joy of information and knowledge, in the architecture and library concept of the Qatar National Library behind and in front of the scenes, can be seen as the moment when this book came to an idea.

Awakening the Knowledge Society The knowledge society will have a decisive impact on the twenty-first century. Knowledge as an economic basis changes social, organizational, economic, and technical processes. To master this complex innovation process, we need to learn more about knowledge, its origin, and its development. Knowledge is intelligence. As data and artificial intelligence expand human intelligence, we need to rethink, reclassify, and think ahead about the source of intelligence –knowledge and the knowledge repository. The change from crafts to industry, to technology and now to knowledge economy, is unstoppable. In addition to the growing influence of artificial intelligence, human intelligence is growing in importance. It will also be the foundation of our social progress in the knowledge society of the twenty-first century, for development, renewal, and exchange.

Society, Community and Participation Libraries are of enormous importance to the knowledge society in the twenty-first century. They represent access, securing real information and generating knowledge. All this takes place through the existence of libraries. It is important that the library turns away from its sole academic ambition and now becomes more and more a public space with unrestricted access for everyone. The library will be the new common room.

The Return of Enlightenment General education has become something almost taken for granted, though far from guaranteed worldwide. However, the powerful climate change and the accompanying global offensive for sustainability as well as the designation of the 21st century as the Information Age demand more, because the anchoring of sustainability requires new knowledge and the endless world of information and data does not yet show any value-adding benefit for society. Who but libraries can shape this new beginning, as a great change through enlightenment?

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The Role of Architecture Architecture is the library’s most important partner because it gives the new tasks and challenges associated with it the flexibility needed to provide concrete form to creative ideas through innovative space solutions, so that the library can develop in the twenty-first century as a knowledge society demands of it. Libraries are taking on a new and important role among the buildings for the community in the twenty-first century as a vehicle for secure information. In a virtual world of information, they make knowledge reliable, ideally free of charge, and community-building available to the wider society. The way the library is used is currently changing rapidly; everything that was previously known is being turned upside down and re-sorted. This new flexible architecture creates new perspectives for new education working environments as a Co-Working Space, Maker Space, and Meeting Space. New knowledge is thus generated. Knowledge is therefore also placed in the center as a motor for creativity. Digital worlds in the library introduce a new, emotional factor and shape the acquisition of knowledge through diverse access. Digital worlds make library processes secure and lead to more transparency and access to all areas of these knowledge archives. Participation is a major challenge; this means making access to information and knowledge possible for all generations and social classes. The speed of change is so great that the conversion, the re-finding of space, must be permanently possible. Architects are faced with the task of integrating this changing use of libraries into the design, planning, and building process. This flexibility will be the formation of a new knowledge-based community in the twenty-first century. It is only education that makes comprehensive social development possible and ultimately leads to innovation in all areas of society. Architecture thus also becomes a driving force for politics. Together, politics and architecture must be aware of their role that has this change in hand, and can shape and enable it.

When Librarians and Architects meet KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY is a future focus of the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION. We want to pursue the latest developments, challenges, and tasks of architecture for the twenty-first century, to bring them into the social focus and put them up for discussion. One of the first themes we addressed was the library and its architecture in the twenty-first century. In various events, the discussion took place directly and in a joint exchange between architects and information and library scientists. Such a meeting makes it possible to show the different ways of thinking and the approach to the subject of the library, which is on one hand an organized institution and on the other hand an organized space. Both approaches have “The Library” in mind but look at it from different angles.

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This book presents the current status of libraries and knowledge perception and how knowledge continues to exist with incredible social acceptance through innovative architecture.

Libraries in the Twenty-First Century How they change Society and Architecture The reading room was the heart of a library for centuries, as a study room with strictly arranged bank rows, in which each person devoted himself (alone) to his book selection and read. “Quiet, silent and very academic“ – this is how the aura of a classical library can be described, which was a place of concentrated tranquility. Libraries have changed almost unnoticed in the last 20 years. They are more than ever crowd-pullers. They have adapted to digitalization early and consciously, have recognized the changed needs and the growing desire of their users to work in a community, and have designed new space concepts for this purpose. They are therefore now the pioneer and engine of a changing KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY in the twenty-first century. Ines Miersch-Süß Editor

◂ Fig. 4: Podium discussion on January 17, 2019 · Libraries in the Twenty-first Century – How they Change our Community and Architecture; a cooperation event with the SLUB (Saxon State Library – State and University Library Dresden). At the first panel discussion on the occasion of the official opening of the Qatar National Library with Vincent Kersten from OMA, Claudia Lux, Achim Bonte, and Georg Gewers discussed the change in the library towards a building for the community and its future role in the modern knowledge society. © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION / Daniel Koch Fig. 5: Podium discussion on January 23, 2019 · Digital Worlds in the Library – How they Change our Community and Architecture; a Cooperation Event with the DNB (German National Library) in Leipzig. The concept of the new Qatar National Library includes a variety of new digital applications for ­visitors of all ages. The library itself is a high-tech hub for digital networking, a “smart architecture” that further thinks the cultural heritage into a current world of knowledge. This realignment was the focus of the second panel discussion, at which Christian Bergmann, Benedikt Schulz, Claudia Lux, Michael Fernau, and Ulrich J. Schneider discussed the development of the library into a building for the digital community. © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION / Daniel Koch

Figure 1–4: 1st International Library Summit on October 4, 2019 in Venice at ­Fondazione Querini Stampalia; Ines Miersch-Süß and Jette C. Hopp, opening of the summit; Elif ­Tinaztepe from SHL Architects, Max Dudler, and Dante Bonuccelli presenting library projects. © MSAOFUTUREFOUNDATION

From a Library of Objects to a Library of Interactions Curators Review of the 1st International Library Summit in Venice in 2019 “With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – no one at all – can tell you what to read and when and how” – Doris Lessing –

Let me issue a thesis that the main reason libraries exist are for people to interact. That was exactly what happened when we gathered in Venice for the First International Library Summit to discuss the role of the library in the twenty-first century, together with international participants consisting of architects, library scientists and publishers. The curatorial objective of the summit was to initiate transdisciplinary discourse, to push our thinking towards a more sustainable and visionary library concept of the future, to challenge predefined directions, embracing the other and the unknown. As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in society. The library space is also a political space, as it represents the right to free education, which is also a fundamental democratic right. The 12-hour conference program featured keynote presentations and panel discussions, highlighting important topics such as: What role will libraries play in the twenty-first century? What new architectural concepts and building solutions are needed for this future? How does this development influence the future of books? More than just the place where books live, libraries are an integral part of any community. They provide information, resources and a connection to the world at large – a political dimension. I am confident that this interdisciplinary forum, where we shared our expert knowledge, listened to each other, exchanged thoughts, interacted, surprised, learned, and inspired each other, will give all participants a wider reference frame, a clearer vision of the future library format when returning to their individual professional fields after the summit. When discussing the role of the library in the twenty-first century we certainly have differentiated within the different typologies, the national library, the educational university library and the public library, which was reflected in the thematic structure of the summit’s program. Independent from the library’s specific mission, a significant tendency is emerging; as our methods of acquiring, sharing and communicating knowledge evolve ever more rapidly, the typologies of these library spaces must also change in order to accommodate, and moreover, empower our human capacity for learning as places that enliven, activate and diversify. How do people study and share knowledge in these spaces? How we can learn from their strategies for learning?

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-003

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Fig. 5: 1st International Library Summit on October 4, 2019 in Venice at Fondazione Querini ­ tampalia. © MSAOFUTUREFOUNDATION S Fig. 6: 1st International Library Summit on October 4, 2019 in Venice at Fondazione Querini ­ tampalia; evening reception with FUTURE TALK and celebration of the Innovation Building Award S 2019. © MSAOFUTUREFOUNDATION

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How can we leverage the power of chance encounters and celebrate the role physical space plays in the intellectual stimulation of its users? Ultimately, these buildings for knowledge are made to engender discovery. Thus, consequently a library could be interpreted as a space rather than an object, as an institution rather than a building. “Buildings for Knowledge” explores spaces dedicated to cultivating knowledge with the conception and design of new libraries, and the impact library design can have on promoting a sense of ownership and inclusivity, places that enliven, activate and diversify. It will be interesting to see if something like a global vision will emerge in the future. Jette Cathrin Hopp Invited Curatore of 1st International Library Summit in Venice, 4th of October 2019 The Engagement of the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

“Social isolation is responsible for poverty and violence. There are some interesting examples of multifunctional libraries operating 24/7, allowing for not just book referencing but also group activities like playing music, recording, 3D-printing, use of conference rooms and small studios for dance or similar activities. A public building used with this purpose can help the community to enhance communication between people, thus encouraging social integration.” Dante Bonuccelli, Future Talk.

II Awakening the Knowledge Society – The Role of Library Architecture Achim Bonte: More Kitchen than Grocery Store Catherine Lau: Libraries of the Future Max Dudler: Spaces for Books – Places for People Georg Gewers: Celebrating Knowledge and Scientific Workout Werner Frosch: Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society Ines Miersch-Süß: Library Architecture and Innovation

Fig. 1: A glimpse into the Central Library’s central reading room (© SLUB / Florian Bieler).

Fig. 2: A photo of the SLUB building and its recognisable architecture (© SLUB / Henrik Ahlers).

Achim Bonte

More Kitchen than Grocery Store The SLUB Dresden as an Example of Functional Change and Library Developability “Our libraries should transition to places to do stuff, not simply places to get stuff. The library will become a laboratory in which community members tinker, build, learn, and communicate. We need to stop being the grocery store or candy store and become the kitchen. We should emphasize hospitality, comfort, convenience and create work environments that invite exploration and creativity.”1

This is the image the American librarian Joyce Valenza invoked more than a decade ago, accurately describing a necessary paradigm shift in libraries. As a result of increasing digitalization and the easy accessibility of information and knowledge that goes along with it, as well as changing expectations among younger generations, libraries of the future will have to be much more than media repositories and lending stations. The guiding concept is no longer the categorization of content but rather high-quality “knowledge work” in a significantly broader field of activity. The ability to combine effectively both the digital with the real world, as well as the fascination for new learning and communication culture with what is worth preserving of the old, is a crucial criterion for the new library concept. Essential, too, is a fundamentally changed partnership between specialists and users. “Libraries for people is the old way of looking at libraries,” asserts the library scientist Richard David Lankes. “The new way sees instead a library of people”. The living interaction between librarians and their community and its ideas and engagement are an integral part of what both characterizes and strengthens a library.2 Founded in 1556, the Sächsische Landesbibliothek  – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) is one of the largest and most diverse academic libraries in Germany. It is the library of the Technische Universität Dresden, the state library for the free state of Saxony and an important center for innovation and service in the German library sector. Like all institutions traditionally engaged in distributing and storing information, the SLUB has experienced profound changes in the 30 years since the introduction of the World Wide Web. While the number of downloads at the

1 Joyce Valenza, Library as domestic metaphor, 25. 8. 2008, http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/ 2008/08/25/library-as-domestic-metaphor/. 2 Richard David Lankes, Expect more. Demanding better libraries for today’s complex world (Jamesville/NY, 2016), 62; Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the people. How social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization and the decline of civic life (New York, 2018). Achim Bonte, Saxon State and University Library Dresden https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-004

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library has more than tripled over the last ten years, physical loans have dropped by almost half. At the same time, the character of the inventory has shifted. Each year fewer printed works are bought and documented, and two thirds of the budget is spent on non-physical media such as large digital references and full-text collections, all of which affects the use of space and staff numbers. In the face of rapidly growing demands in the areas of hardware maintenance and software development, the IT department has doubled to 50 employees, one-seventh of the total staff. In addition, many new qualifications are being required of the workforce, for example, in the fields of event management, web and social media design, facilities management, and staff development.3 In order to participate as actively as possible in shaping the contours of this transformation while maintaining enough valued educational and sharing services to secure continued support for the library, the team produced a strategy paper with input from users entitled “SLUB 2025.”4 In it, the SLUB, as an academic library, defines its tasks along the entire research cycle. It describes services and tools for data management, for academic writing and publishing or for impact analyses of publications, and guarantees the long-term accessibility of all self-produced data. As a public institution, it also considers itself obligated in a particular way to supporting a free, knowledge-based society. Therefore, openness, equal opportunity, and diversity are especially valued in the development of services as well as in social interactions. In accordance with the theses advanced by Valenza and Lankes, the SLUB considers itself to be a protected space in which people with different interests, diverse cultural backgrounds, and lifestyles learn from and with each other and work together. As a public center for information sharing, it is concerned with supporting the democratic ideal of a responsible and informed citizenry. The vision of organizing true two-way communication in multiple disciplines within the library and promoting a healthy give and take of knowledge and experience is already evident today in the SLUB labs.

Interactive Laboratories Displace Rows of Shelves The SLUB initiated the first dedicated laboratory in 2015 with the SLUB Makerspace. The concept arose from the recognition that libraries would remain committed to available knowledge codified in texts, whether analog or digital, but also had to pay more attention to increasingly significant non-textual systems of signs and worlds

3 Achim Bonte, “Befähigung im Wandel. Personalgewinnung und -entwicklung in deutschen Biblio­ the­ken,” Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis 41 (2017): 115–121, https://doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2017-0014. 4 SLUB 2025, Wissen teilen  – Menschen verbinden (Dresden, 2019), https://nbn-resolving.org/ urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-357501.



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of knowledge. Makerspaces are open workshops dedicated to the practical aspects of gaining knowledge. They foster the rapid production of objects (rapid prototyping), the discovery and dissemination of new technologies, experience sharing, and networking. Basic equipment includes devices such as 3D-printers, laser cutters, and CNC-mills alongside smaller supporting tools, ideally complemented by spaces for more conceptual or documentary works as well as presentations and storage areas. Innovations and productive exchanges arise from the personal interactions among computer experts, designers, and creators, each with their own specific talents and capabilities. Our goal is to encourage the most open accessibility to and free circulation of knowledge. The first lab was established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since then, the Makerspace initiative has become a rapidly growing, organized global movement that has gradually come to include libraries. The librarybased Makerspace certainly does not compete with those at universities, which are often pre-existing, high performance engine rooms of individual faculties, but is rather a previously missing component in the workshop and device landscape of a university, taking on a complementary and propaedeutic role associated with features such as “openness,” “accessibility,” “interdisciplinarity,” and “sustainability.”5 Following the motivating experiences in the SLUB Makerspace, the library has enthusiastically applied the idea of common experimental and experiential spaces and the slogan “knowledge comes from doing” to other areas. In 2018, in cooperation with the TU Dresden, the SLUB Text Lab —a Makerspace of words, in a certain sense — was established as an open workshop in which analog and digital writing and editing processes could thrive through consulting services, practical exercises, and group exchanges. In the Text Lab there are various settings and enough space for both collaborative and solitary writing: a large, well-lit, and inviting writing area with flexible desks, seminar rooms, and group workspaces as well as a writing café. Parts of the exterior area serve as a communal garden, which in good weather becomes a green writing zone. Since writing should always be understood as a physical process as well, a relaxation area invites guests to rest and recover or practice yoga. In addition, the lab hosts events such as readings, writing workshops, and book groups. The library’s current project and most recent addition is the SLUB Open Science Lab. Jointly developed consulting services and tools aim to make all the elements of the research process increasingly accessible and sustainably usable. The focus is on topics such as open-access publishing, the management of open research data or alternatives to the traditional bibliometric systems (altmetrics). With a view to libraries’ social impact, Makerspace, Text Lab, and Open Science Lab are geared to citizen scientists as well, in order to promote exchanges between academia and society. The labs were purposefully not established in the central SLUB building, but rather each in one of the six decentralized locations making up the whole system. This spatial

5 Theresa Willingham and Jeroen de Boer, Makerspaces in Libraries (Lanham, 2015).

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Fig. 3: A popular and flexible learning environment: the SLUB Forum (© SLUB / Crispin Iven Mokry).

Fig. 4: With its modern and welcoming interior, the SLUB Forum is an inviting and communicative space (© SLUB / Henrik Ahlers).



More Kitchen than Grocery Store 

Fig. 5: The SLUB Makerspace – an experimental and experiential laboratory (© SLUB / Lukas Boxberger).

Fig. 6: As a “third place”, the SLUB regularly hosts various cultural and scientific events (© SLUB / Christina Schneider).

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distribution prevents the main building from becoming the central point of attraction and exceeding its capacity. At the same time, this arrangement protects the decentralized sites from the effects of the continued erosion of classic, media-related library functions since they are better able to meet evolving needs with their specialized, innovative offers. Proving that the SLUB is on the right track with its lab concept is the positive feedback from professionals and the public. In 2017 and 2020, the SLUB Makerspace and SLUB Text Lab received the “Zukunftsgestalter in Bibliotheken” (Trailblazers in Libraries) prize.6

New Requirements for Buildings and Premises New library functions are usually not organized in new, purpose-built premises. Plans for the SLUB’s main building, opened in 2002, originated mainly in the pre-digital era, if one considers the introduction of visual web browsers, high-performance Internet search engines, and mobile devices as the fundamental milestones of the digital revolution; and Dresden’s library satellites were, with few exceptions, originally not meant to house libraries, but intended for other purposes. Nonetheless, because of the new functions attributed to the library as a center for communication and experience, even the original buildings are expected to fulfill much higher expectations. Along the same lines, the increasing rigidity of academic programs and the acceleration of the whole academic enterprise has rendered time an especially precious resource. For these reasons, libraries are no longer merely shelves, tables, and chairs, but rather flexible workspaces with reliable wi-fi, round-the-clock service, and well-run cafeterias. The same is true for the range of information itself. Preparatory library orientations seem increasingly anachronistic where intuitive usability or individualized, just-in-time support is expected.7 Against this backdrop, the SLUB is currently preparing the main building for a far-reaching renovation and spatial remodeling project after 18 years of uninterrupted operations and 30 million visits. In the mid-term, efforts include a new climate control system and new exhibition areas, improvements in the existing system at checkout and information counters, a modern research reading room, and an expansion of the cafeteria. In light of the continuing work on the library’s product range, it was clear to all involved that minor functional adjustments and changes must remain possible, 6 The prize has been awarded annually since 2012 in cooperation with the journal Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis and the association Zukunftswerkstatt Kultur- und Wissensvermittlung, and is donated by the De Gruyter publishing company. 7 Olaf Eigenbrodt and Richard Stang (eds.), Formierungen von Wissensräumen. Optionen des Zugangs zu Information und Bildung (Berlin, 2014); “Achim Bonte, Was ist eine Bibliothek? Physische Bibliotheken im digitalen Zeitalter,” ABI-Technik 35 (2015): 95–104; Diane Koen and Tracy Engel (eds.), Library design for the 21st century (Berlin; Boston, 2019).



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even before the start of this large construction project. As a result, the SLUB rededicated the classic map reading room as a Makerspace in 2015 and thoroughly revamped the main library’s 460m² main entrance hall in 2017/18. The card catalogue cabinets, set up as the catalog area when the building first opened, were bit by bit removed as the library transitioned to a fully electronic catalogue system. Since the cabinets were mounted on long tables, this area just beyond the entrance was soon informally transformed into a space for study groups, accessible with jackets and bags, now known as the SLUB Forum. Almost by chance, then, the library gained a new, welcome space to accommodate the growing need for groupwork areas. On the other hand, the extra capacity in the regular groupwork rooms and the absolute gain in workspaces brought with it some qualitatively serious disadvantages that could not be overlooked. The noise level rose noticeably, especially in the front section of the library, and spread disruptively through the lower levels, as preventive construction measures were lacking. In addition, groups worked tightly packed together, without any privacy, at inflexible furniture groupings hardly suited to the purpose. A productive dialogue between employees and library users, with the support of an interior design firm and a communications agency, yielded a satisfactory solution: the basic functional advantages of the ad-hoc groupwork area were preserved while the negative side effects of the arrangement — unacceptable in the long term — were neutralized through a new, more versatile group workspace made up of smaller, less unwieldy furniture choices. While libraries adapt to varied needs and forms of learning beyond their unchanged, valuable functions as important places for reading and concentration, the central question remains: what are the characteristics specific to libraries compared to public institutions and private enterprise offering similar services? Or, in other words: what makes a library in the twenty-first century a library? At first glance, the guiding paradigm seems ultimately to unite the capabilities of Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, and co-working spaces and to emulate these successful role models when creating products and services. In this analogy, Amazon stands for fast, round-the-clock, customer-oriented content delivery, Apple for attractive devices and intuitive user interfaces, Starbucks for comfortable places to sit and reliable culinary provisions, and co-working for the opportunity to exchange knowledge and engage in intellectually stimulating encounters. Aside from the fact that this sort of profile would have to be measured on the quality standards set by the above-mentioned companies, what actually arises as a result is merely a catalogue of services that is not necessarily associated with or essential to the library as an institution. For example, an organization like the oldest co-working space in Berlin, betahaus, can offer an experience somewhere between a Viennese coffee house, a library, a home office, and a school campus8; imagine if similarly competitive concepts prevailed directly within university settings. Just as a thought experiment, for instance, a few years ago architects at the TU Dresden pro-

8 https://www.betahaus.com/our-story.

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 Achim Bonte

Fig. 7: Sometimes having a break and taking part in a current discussion just requires taking one step outside (© SLUB / Annemarie Grohmann).

Fig. 8: The grass-covered roof of this underground building also functions as a recreational area (© SLUB).



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posed a “campus center with an academic cinema, exhibition space and areas for collaborative initiatives.”9 Libraries’ decision to invest in spaces that prioritize the quality of visitors’ experiences is still the right and only one – there are no viable alternatives. Of course, in order to contend successfully with potential competition, the mixture and quality of services must be appropriate and special conditions must apply. One sofa doesn’t make a chill-out zone, and a 3D printer isn’t by itself a Makerspace. In order to avoid the dangers of mere imitation, especially in the face of limited resources, it makes sense to carefully consider local circumstances and proceed in a more consciously site-specific, granular manner rather than using a one-dimensional, cookie-cutter approach. Indeed, the coworking space betahaus, mentioned above, describes its own aims not as a generic, but rather a “truly unique” combination of the four integrated service packages it offers. It is just as important to make deliberate use of the substantial strategic advantages of public educational and cultural institutions when developing services and capacities. Compared to the Internet industry, public libraries are, as a rule, considerably disadvantaged in terms of the scope of resources, creative freedom, and the dynamics of change. On the other hand, they still enjoy a high level of trust and social approval in the field of information and knowledge, unlike many private companies. They are rightfully considered to be less concerned with profits than with the common good, to be mostly non-ideological, accessible, and open and can implement changes that have been accurately assessed as correct with a steady hand free from pressure from demanding shareholders. By paying careful attention to these valuable attributes, skillfully cultivating their image and conscientiously creating services and products, libraries can successfully position themselves as “unique” for their defined clientele and will be able to compete in the long-term with commercial service providers. Conversely, if aimlessly following trends, squandering limited resources, and deprioritizing quality and transparency dominate decision-making, the mantra of the library as a living laboratory could very quickly prove to be mere autosuggestion.

9 Sächsische Zeitung (5. 1. 2015), “Campus” insert.

Catherine Lau

Libraries of the Future: A Singapore Case Study In 2012, Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB) started developing its Libraries of the Future Masterplan, mapping out a 15-year programme between 2015 and 2030 to revitalise the city-state’s network of 27 public libraries. In the midst of declining usage of libraries globally, the Masterplan was a response to the pressing, and sometimes special, challenges that public libraries in Singapore faced. Singapore’s libraries have to contend with a unique situation: its smaller public libraries located in shopping malls are becoming increasingly popular and overcrowded, while much larger libraries in standalone buildings are experiencing a drop in visitors. More importantly, the habits and expectations of library users in Singapore, like in many other parts of the world, are changing with the times. These were the main factors that led to the strategies adopted by the planners of the Masterplan.

A Masterplan for the Future The Libraries of the Future Masterplan was crafted with three value propositions in mind: to (i) provide personalized and customised experience through targeted services; (ii) provide seamless access to collections and services through improved physical and digital channels; and (iii) provide opportunities for collaborative learning through partnership with the community. From the very start, we were conscious that the value propositions must be closely aligned with NLB’s mission statement: “We make knowledge come alive, spark imagination and create possibilities.”1 Singapore is a highly urbanised city-state with a 5.6 million-strong population2 that is fairly well spread out over an island that is barely 722 square kilometres in size. This means no one has to travel very far to get to any one of its 27 public libraries that are equally well dispersed among the city’s main neighbourhoods. In order to extend our reach to as many people as possible, one broad strategy of the Masterplan has been to upsize popular libraries that are situated at easily accessible and convenient locations around Singapore. Chiefly, this entailed renovating and increasing the space given to libraries found in shopping malls – which are typically 1,200 to 2,000 square metres – up to a maximum of 3,000 square metres. At the same time, less easily accessible stand­1 https://www.nlb.gov.sg/WhoWeAre/AboutUs/AboutNLB.aspx. 2 Singapore In Figures 2019. Department of Statistics Singapore. Catherine Lau, National Library Board Singapore https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-005



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alone libraries are relocated to major transportation hubs or shopping malls that attract a higher footfall. Within the first five years of the Masterplan from 2015 to 2019, six libraries3 were either revamped in situ or relocated, including Tampines Regional Library (TRL) – the subject of this chapter. To complement these infrastructural plans, a second strategy of the Masterplan is the development of a robust service framework to support new and innovative programming. The service framework largely focuses on services for different age groups, ranging from early literacy for young children to seniors in their golden years. To this end, librarians specialising in each of the service age groups curate collections and programmes to interest and engage their target users. Whenever opportunities arise, new services for different age groups are prototyped at the newly revamped libraries. This in turn is driven by the demographic structure of the population living in the vicinity of the library – a key factor that would have been studied during the development phase. For example, as a result of user studies and focus group discussions conducted prior to the opening of the revamped Bedok Public Library in 2017, senior-friendly space design and resources targeted at the silver generation became a major defining feature of this library. Today, older users at the Bedok Public Library appreciate equipment such as electronic magnifiers, social learning spaces and one-on-one technology help sessions. In the longer term, these new demographic-specific design and services piloted in the revamped libraries will eventually be rolled out to other library branches. A closer look at the TRL, which opened in 2017, illustrates the thinking and strategies behind the Masterplan. The library was designed with a traditional kampong theme in mind. These were villages built of wood and thatching where Singaporeans lived long before urbanisation gave way to high-rise living from the 1960s onwards. Kampongs were known for their communal living, and this is what TRL has tried to replicate in creating a space that encourages interaction and the sharing of resources among users.

The Remaking of Tampines Regional Library In 1994, a study entitled “Library 2000: Investing in a Learning Nation” was published by the Library 2000 Review Committee to make the case for a national body to manage the national and public libraries in Singapore. This report led to the formation of the National Library Board (NLB) in 1995, a statutory board that was part of the former Ministry of Information and The Arts. 3 These six libraries are Seng Kang Public Library, Bukit Panjang Public Library, Tampines Regional Library, Bedok Public Library, Yishun Public Library and library@harbourfront.

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Fig. 1: The old Tampines Regional Library closed in June 2017 after 23 years to make way for a new state-of-the art library.

Fig. 2: The new Tampines Regional Library is located within Our Tampines Hub, a modern community and lifestyle centre offering a wide range of facilities to the residents of Tampines town.



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The same report proposed Tampines Regional Library as a prototype regional library, i.  e. one that is bigger than a regular public library, serves more people and contains a large and much more diverse collection. Occupying its own building in the newly built town of Tampines to serve residents here and other towns on the eastern side of Singapore, the regional library which opened in 1994 was large by local standards. With a sprawling floor area of 6,208 square metres, TRL was easily double that of any of the eight existing public libraries. As Singapore’s first regional library, some of most advanced technological features of the time were rolled out in this space. These features included video-on-demand terminals, cable television and Internet-enabled computer terminals providing access to electronic databases. TRL was the testbed to try out Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) which enables the loan and return of library items. It was also among the first libraries in the world to install self-checkout machines for library users to borrow items by themselves, reducing the time wasted in having to wait in queues. Other than technological innovations, the library organised regular public lectures on various subjects in the 200-seat auditorium on the third floor of the library building, and storytelling sessions for children in the activity room of the children’s wing on the ground floor. By 2015, the regional library was serving close to 260,000 residents in Tampines and also reaching out to more than 700,000 people in the eastern region of Singapore. By this time, NLB had grown its public library operations from just eight branches to a network of 27 public libraries. Buoyed by the success of TRL, we subsequently opened two other regional libraries – the Woodlands Regional Library in 2001 and Jurong Regional Library in 2004 – in Singapore’s northern and western regions respectively. These two regional libraries, each occupying around 11,000 square metres of space, were nearly double the size of the original TRL. By then, TRL was starting to lose its original lustre. It was looked upon as an undersized regional library and situated in a less than convenient location; its standalone building was nestled within a cluster of public apartment blocks some distance away from the town centre of Tampines and its transportation hub. When the Libraries of the Future Masterplan was unveiled in 2015, one of its strategies was to relocate libraries to buildings that are closer to transportation hubs and places that attract a higher footfall. As a result, TRL was moved to a new integrated community hub called Our Tampines Hub (OTH) in 2017. With this move, the library not only doubled its space from 6,208 square metres to 12,600 square metres4 in gross floor area, but also enhanced its array of services and introduced new and innovative ways to engage the community.

4 12,600 square metres includes floor area occupied by partner spaces.

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A Vibrant Community Hub Our Tampines Hub was billed as Singapore’s first integrated community and lifestyle hub when it was launched in 2017. At a whopping 120,000 square metres, Our Tampines Hub brings together a comprehensive range of community facilities and services under one roof. Swimming pools, a community centre, a football field and 5,000seat stadium, a 400-seat arts theatre and a public service centre, along with a retail mall with eateries and entertainment outlets, are housed within the hub, making it a vibrant centre for residents of Tampines. Our Tampines Hub was the perfect location for the new Tampines Regional Library. Occupying five floors, the library has become a nexus for community learning and collaborations – the go-to space for residents of all age groups seeking a comfortable environment for reading and learning. About 20 percent, or 1,700 square metres, of the library’s floor area is given to community and commercial partners. These include two culinary studios, meeting rooms for interest groups, a heritage gallery and an indoor children’s playground. By integrating such services into the library space, the library has been able to offer new and varied learning experiences for visitors. At the same time, its community and commercial partners are able to engage a wider audience through the high footfall the library attracts. For example, the National Heritage Board (NHB) operates the Tampines Heritage Gallery on Level 2, which on an ordinary day showcases images and information on the history of Tampines. On some weekends, guided tours and storytelling and craft sessions are held by volunteers and NHB staff. Integrating the gallery within the library complements the library’s role as a centre for learning. Aside from partners who are physically integrated within TRL, the library also collaborates closely with the other agencies occupying Our Tampines Hub through programmes and community engagement efforts. For instance, in November 2018, the library hosted a series of classic Asian film screenings at the hub’s Festive Arts Theatre. In 2019, the Big Book Giveaway, the library’s annual used-book event, was held at the hub’s open plaza, attracting close to 1,800 participants who carted home more than 10,000 used books.



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Unique Interlocking Architecture As the first lifestyle and community hub in Singapore, Our Tampines Hub is the prime focal point of the town. Architecturally, the hub is designed as a ring-block overlooking the stadium and football pitch. TRL occupies Levels 2 to 6 of the south-east wing, with a stunning and expansive internal façade overlooking the football pitch. The longest floor plate on Level 2 of the library spans the length of the football field. At about 200 metres long, this posed both an opportunity and a challenge for the planners when they designed the library. TRL’s façade faces the town’s main transportation node, which comprises two train stations and a bus depot, and is clearly visible to daily commuters when they first enter Our Tampines Hub. The library’s two entrances are strategically located near two of the hub’s four main entrances, and merge seamlessly into the main pedestrian walkway that leads into the town centre proper. In this sense, the library acts as an air-conditioned conduit, directing human traffic – as it were – from the main thoroughfare to the arts theatre and public housing cluster located further within the hub. Between the external and internal glazed glass façade, generous natural lighting permeates throughout the library. Lush greenery in the form of indoor trees and planters cut across all the floors, creating air wells that allow additional natural lighting to infuse the library’s interiors. One defining feature of the library is the four sky gardens where visitors can escape to enjoy the feeling of reading outdoors. The community spaces within Our Tampines Hub are deliberately designed to be interlocking, for instance, the community centre is strategically located near the library space and its entrance at Level 2. This interlocking design of spaces serve to encourage collaborations between the community partners and expose visitors to more varied and holistic learning experiences. For example, the culinary studios are located at Level 2 of the library and integrate with the latter’s comprehensive range of print and electronic publications on baking and cookery. This juxtaposition of related spaces in turn encourages students from the culinary studios to explore the library’s cookery collection. This convergence of knowledge and practical hands-on learning spaces is evident in several areas of the library, including a makerspace where tactile learning takes place alongside curated collections that aim to spark new ideas and innovation. Through these interlocking spaces, which create visual dialogues and engagement between one space and another, library users become visually aware of the other activities they can avail themselves of.

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 Catherine Lau

Fig. 3: Seats facing the football field on Level 2 of Tampines Regional Library



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 Catherine Lau

Zoning Within the Library TRL occupies five floors, from Levels 2 to 6, with each floor occupying a dedicated zone for users of different age segments and/or user groups. Thanks to the generous floor space, the library has been able to provide a more customised experience for visitors. Table 1 summarises the zoning by floor and the key sections each floor contains. Tab. 1: Tampines Regional Library zoning at a glance. Level

Zone

Sections

L6

Sanctuary

– – – –

Senior-friendly space, large print collection Quiet reading surrounded by rooftop garden Physical and e-Newspapers Programme Zone

L5

Hive

– – –

Non-fiction collection Flexible discussion and work spaces Quiet study lounge

L4

Teens / Tweens Common

– Junior and Youth collections and zones – Outdoor decks and gardens for reading – Flexible programming spaces (#spaceout) – Makerspace

L3

Early Literacy Library

– – – –

Early Literacy Library Parent-child interaction areas Baby books, picture books, parenting books Indoor playground (commercial)

L2

Town Square

– – – – –

Lifestyle collection Shop-front displays and exhibition spaces Self-service transaction areas Community Heritage Gallery (NHB) Culinary Studio (PA) and Interest Group Rooms (PA)

In addition to the age-level zoning, TRL has adopted an open layout with fluid con­ nections across all its floors. Within this overall layout, the library features a myriad of flexible spaces that promote opportunities for the community to learn and interact. For instance, the huge stepped terraces linking Levels 4 to 5 and Levels 5 to 6 double up as spaces for events, while the sky gardens that are bathed in natural light can be used for various outdoor activities when needed.



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Customised for Users Before any construction work began on Our Tampines Hub, about 15,000 Tampines residents were polled by the People’s Association, the lead agency developing the town hub, on the amenities they would like to see. Around the same time, the National Library Board interviewed 80 users from different age groups before developing the concept of the new Tampines Regional Library. Such user engagement constitutes a key aspect of the LOTF Masterplan. From the interviews and the demographic study of Tampines town, diverse views and needs were put forward by different user groups. For example, parents with young children expressed the need for a conductive space for parent-child reading activities, while young people and working adults lamented the lack of study and work space, and wanted libraries to become more informal social learning spaces. The study also took into consideration that the new housing developments in Tampines had created a significant spike in the population across all age groups in the town and its surrounding areas. In addition to a resident population, Tampines also hosts a large business community working in commercial buildings as well as students from several institutes of higher learning. The library therefore serves a fairly large non-resident population who use its facilities for work and study. All this validated the need for a larger regional library that serves different age groups and interests.

A Myriad of Learning Spaces TRL was designed to provide distinct learning spaces and resources for different age groups. Toddlers and pre-schoolers enjoy the space on Level 3 with their parents, where books are placed within easy reach and covers are shelved front-facing. Children can also engage with interactive e-books at any of the four stations here. Based on suggestions collated from user interviews during the development phase, parent-child reading and bonding spaces were catered for, along with several child-size reading nooks for discovery and independent reading. Programmes and exhibition spaces are flexible enough to cater to different needs. At the main entrance sits a spacious foyer that can be used for temporary exhibitions and events. Three Interest Group Activity rooms can be configured into one big room for larger events. An open space with moveable tables and chairs on Level 4 called #spaceout can be used either as a quiet hangout space for teens or the venue for a noisy party with food and games. Even the library’s furniture and fittings have been customised for flexibility and comfort. In the Programme Zone, chairs have been designed such that they can be “flipped” into small tables. As Singapore receives lots of sunshine and rainfall, blinds

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 Catherine Lau

Fig. 4: The Terrace on level 4 of Tampines Regional LIbrary is a popular area that is bathed in natural light thanks to its floor to ceiling windows.

Fig. 5: Family reading area on Level 3 of Tampines Regional Library. This floor is where the Early Literacy Library is located.



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Fig. 6: Instead of conventional book drop booths, the library features an automatic book return robot that travels the length of level 2 to the centralised sorting room.

Fig. 7: The makerspace area on level 4 called #spaceout is where creative minds come together to work on special projects that tap new technology.

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can be angled at certain times of the day to block the blinding glare of the sun. On rainy days, sensor-controlled blinds are lowered to keep the rain out from the bookdrop area and garden.

Finding Your Way Around Wayfinding in the large library is managed through interactive directories found on each floor. These directories are equipped with a routing function, allowing users to view the shortest route to their destination and save it in their mobile device for future reference. Another challenge of a large library is managing the location of typically centralised library service points, such as the book return or bookdrop points. As the library has two entrances, both of which are equally used by visitors, the centralised bookdrop and book sorting facility could only reside at one end of the library due to the inherent staggered and interlocking design of the space. To reduce the distance a user has to walk to return an item, the library prototyped a book return robot that not only functions as a typical book return point providing real-time updates of the status of the item, but can also travel along a predetermined route to the centralised sorting room once its bin is full. The automated process was designed for the convenience of both library users and staff. Interestingly, the robot has become an object of curiosity for many first-time visitors to TRL. A suite of electronic transaction points that enable users to carry out various transactions independently, such as book borrowing stations and electronic catalogues, enhance the overall experience of visitors.

Collaborative Learning Providing opportunities for collaborative learning is one key value proposition of the Libraries of the Future Masterplan. Research has shown that learning in groups can be beneficial as they provide opportunities to articulate ideas and concepts, evaluate different viewpoints, and debate and negotiate outcomes. With this in mind, specific areas have set aside in the library to encourage collaborative learning. One example is the siting of the Interest Group rooms and the Culinary Studio on Level 2. On Level 4, it was observed that tweens (aged 10 to 12 years) invariably peruse the teens’ collection for information and leisure reading. Thus, the collection for tweens is now housed on the same floor as the teens collection to allow easy access. As the Tampines town demographic comprises a significant proportion of children and younger people, this section occupies the library’s largest floorplate and is fitted out with enough study seats to cater to the high demand. Programmes and



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events held at the makerspace, #spaceout, and the open steps on Terrace on 4 here become very visible to children and teens, therefore enticing them to participate. The library also designed its working and reading spaces to cater for different needs. For students and working adults, the enclosed Study Lounge on Level 5 has tables with power sockets at each seat; for leisure readers, a variety of seating options are scattered around the library, including a quiet airport lounge-like zone on Level 6. TRL also facilitates collaborative learning by encouraging co-creation at its makerspace. This space is outfitted with equipment such as 3D printers and a green screen backdrop for video production and editing. This is one of two such dedicated makerspaces at regional libraries (the Jurong Regional Library being the other) that provide the chance for users to experience tactile learning and be exposed to emerging technologies. Classes and workshops on how to use new equipment and technologies are regularly held at these makerspaces. Graduates from the programmes are allowed to book slots at the makerspace to work on their own projects at their convenience. By all counts, the makerspaces have been a huge success; it has been observed that certain organic connections form when different users share the space and equipment, facilitating peer-to-peer collaborative learning. The library also hosts several learning clubs, such as the Uke Jammers, a group of some 70 fun-loving ukulele enthusiasts who gather at the programme zone every month to practise and conduct sing-along sessions. Another notable longstanding group is the WISHERS club, which was founded in 2005, at the original TRL site. This club brings together English-speaking library users who wish to learn Mandarin, and Mandarin-speaking users looking to learn English. These learning clubs are prime examples of community-driven initiatives, where people gather to learn from each other in organic, informal settings.

Engaging and Empowering Volunteers During the user interviews conducted in the planning phase, a number of retirees in the community indicated their interest in volunteering at the library in their free time. Recognising the importance of engaging with the community and empowering the efforts of volunteers, Level 6, the highest and smallest floor of the library, was set aside for them. This floor, which is largely operated by a group of volunteers, houses the fiction collection for adults, electronic and physical newspapers, multimedia computer stations and the programme zone. Currently, the volunteers’ main duty is to shelve the books and tidy the shelves. To help them in their work, a Volunteer’s Corner has been set aside in the public area of Level 6 for volunteers and library users to plan and create activities and pro-

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grammes at the library. In 2019 alone, the library attracted 500 volunteers who contributed almost 10,000 hours of their time. Other than retired volunteers, a group of working volunteers with specialised skills at TRL have given their time to conduct makerspace activities such as 3D printing. One notable group is Techpals, which comprises about 45 maker enthusiasts. In 2019, Techpals spent eight weeks at the library’s makerspace, creating community-designed therapy toys for children with autism. The library constantly engages the wider community to contribute their expertise in collaborations that benefit library users.

The Success of TRL and the Masterplan To all intents and purposes, TRL has been a resounding success since its reopening in August 2017. Circulation and visitor rates have shot up dramatically. Between April 2019 and March 2020, the library received some 1.5 million visitors and circulated about 2.14 million volumes compared to 870,000 visitors and 1.46 million loans between 2016 and 2017 (no data is available from 2017 to 2018 as the old library had closed). Additionally, in the same period (April 2019 to March 2020), some 595 programmes were rolled out for all age groups, more than double the number held at the old premises. By relocating and upsizing the library, and creating spaces and services for users, the TRL bucked a global trend of falling library visitorship. In fact, the six revamped libraries under the Libraries of the Future Masterplan have reported similar increased visitors, loans and user engagement trends – which are testimony to the strategies Singapore’s public libraries have undertaken to engage new users and deepen their relationships with existing ones. Our experience has demonstrated that libraries are still relevant in the digital age, provided they address the needs of users and continue to keep up with the radical shifts in society, especially on the technological front. The National Library Board will continue to revamp and relocate more libraries under the Libraries of the Future Masterplan in the next 10 years to ensure that libraries in Singapore remain relevant to the learning aspirations of their users and to foster community engagement. The innovation journey will continue to create a unique learning experience that combines the libraries’ arsenal of physical and digital assets seamlessly and purposefully for both present and future generations of Singaporeans.



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Fig. 8: Another view of Tampines Regional Library’s makerspace. This photo shows a 3D design and printing workshop in progress.

Fig. 9: Tampines Regional Library has a core group of dedicated community volunteers who help out with duties such as shelving books.

Fig. 1: Max Dudler, Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Centre in Berlin: Reading Room, view into the library; completion 2009; photo: Stefan Müller

Max Dudler

Spaces for Books – Places for People Modernity can be described as a process of creative destruction: the old loses its significance and is replaced by something new. It seems almost inevitable that this also applies to the development of the city. As a society develops, types of buildings that were once emphasized, like the ruler’s palace, lose their centralizing, binding significance for all parts of society. But what replaces these buildings? When asking the question as to whether buildings that are being created today can still represent society as a whole through their function and aim, you soon come upon a formerly marginal type of building – the library. The library takes on a special role in European cities – as a public indoor space, open to all, it attains a special status in the minds and memories of its citizens. Despite the advent of new media, surprisingly little has changed in this respect. Particularly because reading is such a simple and rewarding activity, libraries, in the age of the Internet, also need to be places of interactivity and community. Their spaces serve not only the classical activity of intellectual work – reading and writing – but also of conversation, encounter, and serendipitous discovery. New ideas can emerge from unexpected connections between different fields of knowledge. That’s why, in the libraries designed by us, there are silent spaces for concentrated work but also areas for interaction. There is space for dreaming and dozing and space for the passionate side glances. The Grimm Library in Berlin, for example, has even seen the rise of a phenomenon called the Bibster: the fashionable library flaneur. The Humboldt Library is said to be one of the largest non-digital flirt platforms in Berlin. Which is just one of the secrets of libraries. The role that a library can play in modern society is visible from its origin. No architect’s design has so precisely summed up this connection as the design for the (first) national library, by Etienne-Louis Boullée, dating back to 1785 – the eve of the French Revolution and the era when the idea of nationhood was born. What is interesting is that Boullée combined a library with the idea of nationhood. Thus the library was not merely a functional space. The library represented the nation. In enlightened society, knowledge had reached such a significance that, for the first time, the library, instead of the church or the palace, stood at the center of society. Boullée’s sketches contain even more remarkable matters. Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens” served as his model, where the painter epitomizes antiquity’s philosophy as the source of European culture. As with Raphael, Boullée placed the human being at the focus – not the book. To be even clearer: the architectonic center of his national library is empty (!). The library is really a square, and surrounding this square, instead of buildings, there are cascades of books. This library is thus much Max Dudler, Max Dudler Architects https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-006

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 Max Dudler

Fig. 2: Étienne-Louis Boullée, Design for a National Library; 1785; © Max Dudler

Fig. 3: Max Dudler, Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Centre: Section; completion 2009; © Max Dudler



Spaces for Books – Places for People 

 49

more than just a storage space for books. This library is a forum. A place where people meet and discuss. And above it all rises this monumental barrel-vaulted ceiling that superelevates the place and clearly sets it in focus. In Boullée’s concept of architecture parlante, the circle that is created through the disposition of the room symbolizes the world per se – and thus all its accumulated knowledge. Boullée’s library is a public space par excellence. And the library as an institution remains so to this day. Which is why dealing with the topic of designing a library is a central challenge for us. One could almost say that our design approach has been particularly exemplified or could fully develop in the dealing with library typology. This applies both to the structure and detailed design of the buildings and to the attempt to curb the destructive forces of modernity in favor of an architecture that draws its strength, its future, from history. We as architects see libraries as an important aspect within urban culture. This is our primary perspective. The city is the ever pre-existing material. It is the material with which we work, but against which we also have to assert ourselves. Our creative work as architects is situated in this disparity between history and modernity. And because European urban culture always draws its inner tension from the contrasts and boundaries – between the private and the public, between landscape and urbanity, between monument and fabric – that is also from where we obtain our themes and ideas. Our ambition is to create architecture that subsists with and alongside historical architecture, and is able to create a new unity with it. Our libraries in particular are characterized by an attempt to create buildings that are recognisably part of continuity of a cultural identity. They are places where memories can be anchored and which in turn carry memories within themselves.

Fig. 1: Aufnahme der Akropolis von Athen, July 14, 2008, https://upload.wikimedia.org/ wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Akropolis_Athen.JPG.

Fig. 2: Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, view from the roof. © GGewers

Georg Gewers

Celebrating Knowledge and Scientific Workout Chapter 1 On a hot Mediterranean August day, standing on a newly created hill in Athens, with the Acropolis not far from view, we try to find our way into one of newest Greek cultural hotspots, the “Stavros Niarchos foundation”. Built in 2017, it is a bright and intense statement of mixed culture, arts, and worldwide knowledge under one giant roof, on an especially increased hill. The sight towards Piräus and the Mediterranean sea is spectacular, as is the glance back over the widely rolled out Greek Capital. This donation to the Greek nation and finally to the world’s community, on this scale, is extremely unusual, notably in Europe, where for some time such responsibilities and related projects are the territory of the state, the communities, and the cities. Under private power and spirit it was made into an impressive mixed organism of science, knowledge, and of course a new library, the latter being one of the most public and most visible parts of all the pieces in a bright and more than five storey space close to the main entrance – a true celebration of knowledge and its traditional “containers” called books. Founded like the famous libraries in former centuries which were mostly donated by interested and open-minded sovereigns, it stands alone today. It is erected at the same sea level as the Acropolis, which confirms its gravity and meaning for society and expresses its own future expectations. Open to everybody, it is a true and very attractive landmark of culture and knowledge thanks to Renzo Piano and his atelier. The world is now celebrating its “second empire” of libraries and similar institutes, giving them back a strong meaning and providing them again with a grandeur after frugal decades following the Second World War. Other spectacular landmarks of new or reshaped libraries have been built in recent times, such as in Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Qatar, Tjaniji, and Tokyo. Countries such as Arabia or China are also competing with their own library-statements, as they also do with new operas, town halls, and other more visible public institutions. Today it feels like participating in a refreshing period and a recalibration of a newly recovered recognition of science and its disposal, to give it back an anchor or a safe ground in confusing and uncertain times that have come about since the introduction of Wikipedia and free accessible archives all the world. This is similar to how it is necessary to give all cultural and scientific achievements a foundation, an adhesion, and at least a real place, a location in an extremely fast world where things come and go and can get lost easily.

Georg Gewers, Gewers Pudewill https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-007

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This is like built countermovements to the fast, ephemeral, and nonlocal digital knowledge and information that can be anywhere and nowhere in our world and time. Maybe this is one of the main reasons for the resurrection of physical libraries in times of having any kind, size, and quality of knowledge available on your phone. Libraries are still able to show the appreciation and pride of today’s societies, similar to the times of beautifully bound books that framed and served the content, their splendid images, and were themselves a strong expression of culture, often stored and protected in sumptuous environments. For sure it still is entertaining and sexy to touch a beautiful volume and its paper-fixed content, more so than being hypnotized by a dark screen for days and months. An uncomfortable rainy morning in Dublin, spending some lost hours waiting for a train to the sea. We decided to visit the more than 1200 years old Book of Kells in the Trinity College library, which is located above the famous script – literally on top of science and the earliest European history. The reward for waiting was impressive when entering the first floor of the “Long Room” from Architect Thomas de Burgh of the 1730s, with the most generous and epochal long space, with its double height shelves, wooden arches and ladders, busts of scientists and savants, and zillions of leather-bound volumes. It is breathtaking in appearance and even more so while thinking about the effort and the passion of generations behind all this. It is worth reading an article from author Jan Wagner about this: “Alle Zeit in einem Raum. Das Gedächtnis der Menschheit: Über die Schönheit und Notwendigkeit von Bibliotheken”. This is an important and true aspect of the appraisal of physical libraries, their timeless and relaxed while at the same time concentrated atmosphere, like I feel here in Dublin. At the same time they also spread out a miraculous slowness, a quietness and a calmness in all rooms which we almost unlearn and scarcely find today. This is a mystical environment to dive into. It is easy to concentrate here on our own ideas, our own thoughts, and the still unknown. These are some of the best human-made places on the planet to be in. They can be the islands in an uneasy, too busy world without time for breaks and reflection. If you ask yourself when was the last time you entered a library for a real necessary reason (not for sightseeing), it could be a long while, even years ago, such as when you were in university, for a degree project, and mostly you find yourself with very emotional and personal memories. The contemporary library (like most older houses) absorbs and follows the new working methods in the speed and business of today. They are fully equipped and have a much wider radius than their counterparts of previous epochs and enjoy extended media and up to date working methods, while networking like the impressive “Sendai Mediatheque” from Toyo Ito in Tokyo. Already 20 years in existence, it still paradigmatically embodies the new type of hybrid building which handles all new media in a modern society.



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Fig. 3: Trinity College Library, Dublin. © GGewers

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But the future of libraries and their central functions lie in not leaving their old role and accepting the new one of collecting and handling new knowledge in all its levels. Former only called a library, today it is extended by much more media and should be connected to a wide part of the researching and publishing world, incorporating also the pre-stages of knowledge, like institutes and important places of science. It must be an alive and vibrant place and an active part of the network to collect, manage, distribute, play, expose, and finally provide cultural and scientific information without restrictions. In the end the position of a library is one possible final point in a chain or succession of knowledge and science and its different states of aggregation. Scientific information develop over years and eventually finally find their way later into the shelves or files of today, recognized and then shared with everybody.

Chapter 2 Building for Knowledge and Science The architecture of developing and elaborating different kinds of information, which could also be termed as “producing or finding knowledge”, is another approach and has other purposes than a library, while also similar to the processes in the industry. The focus lies not on the public, not on visitors, and not on diffusing things to the public. These environments or “places” need protection, time, and absolute precision in all their elements. Their functions have to be developed from inside to outside and so need a clear direction while working this out and finding the best solution. In our practice we regularly work for different research institutes e.  g. FGH, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Munich, which supports and runs many scientific institutes and practices all over the country, all of which are practical orientated and therefore called “applied research”, which is only a few steps before the industry, a real implementation, and for that a very important branch of science. This branch is very successful and often acknowledged as a worldwide leader in its field. We developed and built in 2013 the FHG research Institute for the IKTS in Hermsdorf, Thüringen, which is a worldwide leader in the research and development of high performance ceramics for many industrial and research applications and much more. A complex building design with many technical and organizational challenges, the design distinguishes a house with a special use. Of course, the façade is of large white ceramic elements, a first flavor for the world outside of what happens inside.



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Fig. 4: Fraunhofer Institut, Hermsdorf. © HG Esch

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Thüringen Architecture State Award, recognition 2014. Also for the FHG we are currently constructing the new research building for a leading institute, the IPA on the campus of the University of Stuttgart. The close relationship to universities shows the high level of “cutting edge” in the practise and working methods as well as the positive relations with other institutes at this acknowledged campus. Different building functions gather around a small yard and staple over one large high-end testing hall for testing light constructions. The façade here is of 100 percent recycled glass from the circle of cradle to cradle as the whole building is sustainable from the start. Another interesting current project is the new institute for “Centogene”, a fast growing university spin-off, which today works in Rostock’s newly made harbor. It researches rare diseases and is very successful; it is no wonder they are also known as “The rare disease company”. Worldwide, Centogene investigates diseases which are very seldom and where mostly no therapies are available yet. The success of Centogene is encouraging and an example worldwide. The built project adapts the special requirements of the company and its potential as well as integrates into the refurbished harbor area from Rostock. Rostock Architecture Award 2018 These examples show a range of very new high-end institutes – all have a strong international self-confidence, are networked internationally, and dependant from a high standard of exchange in their fields. The urban aspect is clear and shows a certain self-consciousness in the neighborhood, while the architecture is purist and self-evident. The focus is always put on the function, the processes, and on a long-lasting quality in function and design. The building must be frame and home for science, the research and their intelligent people as the built environment has to fulfil these facts and expectations in the best and an abstract way. A rather new aspect in planning the architecture of research and science is the high demand of flexibility and multi-use of processes, areas, and spaces. The typical workbench with its “fume hood” (digestorium) and its examination areas will often be replaced by new concepts that sufficiently simulate the experiments and tests, such as with computers or even robots which are almost able to substitute complex phases in a long and expensive researching program. Like in the libraries, often the data themselves are now the real centers and focus of all efforts, not the bound books anymore. The classical test-prep of a lab is also losing ground, space, and meaning in its old way, which gives room for new set-ups and changes.



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Fig. 5: Fraunhofer Institut, Hermsdorf. © HG Esch

Fig. 6: IPA , Stuttgart. © Gewers Pudewill

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Fig. 7: Centonew. © HG Esch



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Fig. 1: Henning Larsen in the Copenhagen studio.

Werner Frosch

Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society Today’s modern society is on its way to become a knowledge based society, in which competitiveness and success under changing conditions are based on the existing and easily accessible knowledge of the members of this society. Education and training are important components of the community, as they enable not only knowledge but also innovation, thus contributing to the dynamic and growth of the knowledge society. Consequently, places where knowledge is imparted and knowledge can be acquired, places that provide access to education and knowledge, are of great importance. The foundations for this society have been laid years ago with buildings that are promoting the desire to learn and to exchange knowledge. From the very beginning, Henning Larsen was committed to designing buildings for education. The first competition won and the first project realized was a school in Denmark. Today, Henning Larsen’s portfolio includes numerous education buildings from preschools to universities. This building typology has been and still is of outmost significance to Henning Larsen.

About Henning Larsen The architect Henning Larsen was born as son of the head teacher of Opsund and thus had an innate relationship to school buildings because at that time the teacher used to live in or next to the school. In an interview, Henning Larsen described how the architecture of the school buildings of his childhood had influenced him: “I realized what a good house is, when my parents moved from Opsund in the west of Jutland to Bregninge in Zealand. There we lived in a school designed by Ivar Bendtsen [founder of the Danish early twentieth century architect group Bedre Byggeskik “Better Building Culture” and architectural reformer]. I liked it a lot to be in that house – it was better to live there.”1

For the first ten years, Henning Larsen grew up in a rural region of Jutland in Denmark close to the coast of the North Sea. From early childhood on, he was fascinated by the

1 Ninka-interview with Henning Larsen, conducted by Anne Wolden-Ræthinge on August 23, 1992 (published in: Kærligheden og Døden. Ninka-interviews med 40 danske personligheder, ©  Anne ­Wolden-Ræthinge & Gyldendal, 2018); quote translated from Danish Werner Frosch, Henning Larsen https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-008

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effect of light, especially sunlight that he perceived in an environment with strong contrasts under a high and clear sky. The buildings there were small and poor and had only tiny windows to keep out cold and wind. At that time, there was no electricity, so in the evenings people gathered in the dim light of petroleum lamps. In comparison the schoolhouse was large and spacious with well-proportioned rooms and windows that were much bigger than those of the surrounding houses. Only the windows in the church where Henning liked to be and where he was captivated by the light were larger. It was an exciting experience for him to see how the light shone through the large church windows. When the family lived in Zealand, the church in Bregninge with its white interior and strong reflections of light left a strong impression on him. Later, he used the light he was so fascinated by in his childhood as an outstanding element in the buildings he designed. During his career as an architect, he worked on his ability to articulate spaces through light and made it a special feature in his designs, which earned him the nickname “Master of Light”. He realized that people are affected by light, and therefore he used light in different ways as a tool to allow a variety of sensations. “This is a question not of masses of light but of the appropriate light,” Henning Larsen said. He let the light stream down or waft in, used it to guide people through a building, or created a series of light effects that lent the architecture its character. For his handling of the “building material” light, a main characteristic of his buildings, and his main interest in the composition of space, light, and the figure of the human body, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the “Nobel Prize” in the field of art, for his life’s work. As a child, Henning Larsen collected trading cards from the coffee substitute of the brand Rich’s, and in Rich’s album of professions in Denmark [Vort flittige folk “Our Industrious People”] he was so fascinated by the description of the activities and tasks of an architect that he decided to become one himself once he was grown up. But when he applied for the Academy of Arts for the first time he was rejected. Therefore, he decided to complete an apprenticeship as a carpenter and to attend the Technical School in Copenhagen before he applied for the second time, now a more mature person, and he was accepted. He even won a scholarship for the Architectural Association’s School in London and spent some time at the MIT in Boston before he graduated as an architect in 1952. For several years he was employed as an architect, among others at Arne Jacobsen’s studio and at the State Building Research Institute, where he worked on the planning of school buildings. In 1956 he cofounded a studio with three other architects as partners and participated successfully in architectural competitions for public buildings, among others Vangebo School in Søllerød (1956), Skt. Jørgensbjerg School in Roskilde (1956), and Langemark School in Horsens (1957), all in Denmark. In 1959, he left the partnership and founded his own studio, Henning Larsens Tegnestue, with one working student as his only employee. After international success, the studio was named Henning Larsen Architects, later shortened to Henning Larsen, and today has more than 300 employees. “Henning still fills much of our self-image. We live from the culture, from what he has created, and from the professional ambition”, says CEO Mette Kynne Frandsen.



Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society 

Fig. 2: Vangeboskolen with its system of small rooms already had the form of a little village. © Gehrdt Bornebusch, Max Brüel, Jørgen Selchau, Henning Larsen / kunstbib.dk

Fig. 3: Klostermarksskole provides plenty of daylight and protected open spaces. © Kontraframe

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Education Buildings by Henning Larsen The new studio’s first project after a competition win in 1960 was Klostermarksskole, a comprehensive school in Roskilde, Denmark. The building is characterized by a long connecting corridor to which the standard classrooms and technical classrooms are attached like the teeth of a comb. This special design feature allows a lot of daylight to enter the interior. Between the “teeth” there are protected open spaces that invite the students to experience movement, communication, and interaction. The design of many of Henning Larsen’s educational buildings is based on the idea of the school or university as a small community – a town within the city – where life can unfold and where varied spaces like squares, streets, and niches create active learning environments. The architectural use of daylight is a common feature in all projects, from skylights to more complex lighting concepts that contribute to emphasizing the atmosphere in the building. The idea of designing small towns and community-creating spaces has taken different forms over the years. The buildings provide a joint, urban structure with a central meeting place. The basis for this design is human interaction and the aim is to create a stimulating framework for the users to develop as social and knowledge-gaining individuals. The central connecting element and the spaces for informal meetings and exchange are found in all of Henning Larsen’s designs for educational buildings. The design is characterized not only by spaces that invite collaboration and dialogue, but also by rooms for concentration and focus. As a whole, the buildings bring a special atmosphere and quality to the physical surroundings that the users can relate to. Upon entering the bright and inviting spaces, daylight heightens their experience and contributes to the intensity of the building. A successful educational building should always provide inspiration to the users and meet the pedagogical strategies laid out by the educational institution. Below, a selection of Henning Larsen’s educational buildings is briefly introduced. In 1961, Henning Larsen won the competition for a new university in Stockholm, Sweden, which in the end was not built according to his plans. Nevertheless, this win established his reputation as a successful participant in international competitions. In 1963, the studio won the second prize in the international competition for the science extension of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and was commissioned with the planning of the Physics Institute in 1973. The urban character of Trondheim University, Norway, a competition win in 1970, completed in 1978, was achieved by creating a glass-covered town complete with streets and squares. It is a vibrant area with rooms for both common and individual academic environments. The high glass ceilings, ensuring year-round ample daylight on the campus, can be opened in warm weather. In many ways, this university building was ahead of its time. More than 40 years later, the building still provides the framework for world-class education and research.



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Fig. 4: Trondheim University – a glass-covered campus braves the Nordic climate. © Roar Øhlander

Fig. 5: CBS Linguistics Faculty with its connecting three-story arcade. © Jens Lindhe

Fig. 6: The circular library of the Alba Nova Physics Center in Stockholm. © Jens Lindhe

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The main entrance of the building for the Linguistic Faculty of the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, a competition win of 1983 and completed in 1989, leads directly into the central hub. A three-story arcade connects the building longitudinally and forms the vibrant core of an educational community. Adjoining the central hub, the spacious common facilities are arranged: a two-story semicircular cafeteria surrounds a large auditorium with a library on top. Classrooms and language laboratories are located along the arcade as well as rooms for research and administration. Alba Nova, the physics center for the university in Stockholm, Sweden, was completed in 2000 after a competition win in 1994. The building creates a joint campus environment for the Royal Institute of Technology and the University of Stockholm. Interdisciplinary exchange in an internal Main Street stimulates research and education. The cylindrical entrance building houses a central lobby, a canteen, an auditorium, and a library. In an adjoining, gently curved building, research and education facilities are concentrated around an inside course of streets. The new building of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, a competition win from 2013, completed in 2017, is designed as a “UniverCity” with a glass-covered Street of Knowledge, Zeil des Wissens, as a connecting center. It provides direct access to seminar rooms, lecture halls, conference rooms, a canteen, a library, a store, and a café. A variety of different learning spaces facilitates the exchange of knowledge among students through informal dialogue and social interaction.

Libraries by Henning Larsen Like the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management containing a library specialized in economics, many of the educational buildings designed by Henning Larsen incorporate libraries. However, Henning Larsen has also designed several independent libraries and extensions to existing libraries. The Gentofte Central Library of 1985 is a bright, modern building that constitutes a new gathering point for the town. The two-story building houses open public functions at ground level, while administrative offices, a staff canteen, and reading rooms are situated on the first floor. The two main entrances are connected by a walkway that widens into an open foyer with information services and an exhibition area. A reading room at the main entrance at the north side, laid out like a winter garden, provides a view of the surrounding park and serves as a comfortable place for citizens to meet yearround. The lending department, which is flooded by daylight from generous skylights, is located centrally in the building. The open, double-height room also gives access to a small lecture hall that accommodates library events and community gatherings. In 1999 the extension and renovation of the historic Malmö City Library in Sweden was completed and provided the city with a modern, open, and welcoming library that



Henning Larsen’s Contribution to the Knowledge Based Society 

Fig. 7: Zeil des Wissens inside Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. © Hufton+Crow

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Fig. 8: Floor plan library (ground floor level) of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. © Henning Larsen

Fig. 9: Aerial views of Gentofte Central Library © Henning Larsen / kunstbib.dk.

Fig. 10: Gentofte Central Library’s lending area. © Mathias Olander



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interacts with its surroundings. The square massing of the new building references the architecture of the existing library. The three detached volumes – old library building, new library building, new central entry – are connected by glass corridors. Daylight plays an essential role in all three buildings and is experienced as a stimulating and varying element. The entrance is lit up from above and along the walls, while light is filtered into the central space of the historical building through the atrium. The large reading space in the new building is flooded with daylight and gives a view of the adjoining park with its tall trees that are changing through the seasons. The Roskilde University Library of 2001 constitutes the second phase of the extension plan for Roskilde University Center in Denmark. The library is prominently situated at the main entrance of the university and is accessed from a new square. Characterized by transparency and openness, it forms one side of a new central garden. The glass facades allow an excellent view of this garden, where a lake surrounds the library building. The light and reflections of the trees in the lake add a special character to the building, changing with the seasons. The library consists of a long, threestory brick building and a distinctive glass building with only one huge room, where the lending department is located. This gives staff and users a unique experience of spaciousness. The library houses open areas, offices for administrative staff, three classrooms, a study hall, and an exhibition area. Rostock University Library, completed in Germany in 2004, is the cornerstone of a comprehensive eight-faculty extension of Rostock University. Located on a prominent, elevated site, the library marks the campus entrance and stands out as a landmark of the new university. The L-shaped building creates a new active space for the university and the city, a plaza that offers a central public area. The library is in dialogue with the student café that faces the square. Natural light floods the reading and studying areas and is regulated by exterior lamellae. Individual study spaces are located in a reading gallery towards the entrance square, separated from the shelf areas by a light well that extends through four stories. The library was developed with a focus on energy-saving measures. The integrated energy design concept includes geothermal energy. The Albertslund Public Library is a renovation project from 2004, where the new building volume replaces the existing first floor library. It is designed as one large open and bright space. The continuous overhead light in the characteristic serrated roof ensures dispersion of daylight into the entire building. New space planning and furnishings create a human scale important for an intimate meeting space. The children’s library is situated towards the south and at a lower level than the rest of the library, which means that it functions as a heat shield for the library space. The large reading room is situated towards the north where there is less need for shielding. The library is designed as an integrated energy design project where energy efficient solutions have been part of the design process from the very beginning. Daylight meets sixty percent of lighting needs during the opening hours of the library. The extension of the Frederiksberg Central Library, completed in 2004, is placed below the northern end of a square in the center of a pedestrian area that was created

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Fig. 11: Malmö City Library with a view of Kungsparken. © Thomas Flensted

Fig. 12: Roskilde University Library seen from the green space. © Jens Lindhe



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by a masterplan for the urban development of a new city area. The square gives access to the library that is visible through a roof light and a side light, which form integrated parts of the square. From the main entrance, users proceed to a number of lending areas located in the existing classical monumental building as well as in the new modern extension. The new part of the library is designed as one big room with a continuous sequence of plateaus, a spatial sequence marked by the direct reflecting daylight from the roof light in the surface of the square. The aim of the extension is to provide a new experience different from the original library. It provides the frame of a new, dynamic and flexible arrangement of the reference library, children’s and junior lending, and music lending. The system of Presidential Libraries in the USA represents a new concept that goes beyond the traditional understanding of the term library. It not only appeals to researchers, but also conveys knowledge to the broad public using the format of exhibitions and events, a real manifestation of the third place in the definition of Ray Oldenburg. Henning Larsen’s 2020 competition entry for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is comprised of four volumes that peek up from a butte, each a formal reference to the geography of the Badlands of North Dakota. With a tower forming a visible landmark, the library becomes a hub for community and a threshold over which visitors can cross into the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The four volumes link underground along a continuous narrative trail where Roosevelt’s legacy is exhibited. From the lobby, visitors follow a sloping spiral path down to the exhibition level, where they find seats that encircle a hearth. It is here the journey begins along a path that is not only an exhibition of Roosevelt’s life, work, and legacy, but is also a showcase for the landscape. Each phase of the exhibition is punctuated by a space that overlooks a different aspect of the surroundings, showing off the changing nature of the Badlands. Where the exhibition spaces at the start are dark, lit by soft daylight that streams in from above, the final stop bathes them in full daylight as they are presented with a panoramic view onto the library and landscape from the tower.

Knowledge-based design The knowledge relates both to sustainability and to the way in which education is best and most successfully imparted. The derived effects of a sustainable design and construction process hold far-reaching advantages, such as how incorporating sustainable solutions into buildings is reflected positively by users and clients. The educational buildings of Henning Larsen exemplify robust, sustainable solutions that meet future needs socially, environmentally, and economically. A building should operate with low energy consumption and offer a healthy, bright, and inspiring indoor climate. One of the key elements in achieving a good indoor climate is daylight. When utilized in the right way, daylight can improve students’ wellbeing

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Fig. 13: Rostock University Library with a view to the newly created plaza. © Reinhard Görner



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and indoor experience as well as reduce the building’s energy consumption. Research proves that the right amount of daylight helps students learn faster and achieve better results (World Green Building Council 2013). In addition, daylight is a rich resource that not only promotes a sense of well-being, but also creates a rich architectural experience—it can be utilized to shape space and orchestrate the experience of time, color, and senses. Henning Larsen has been designing educational facilities for more than 50 years and thus has gained extensive experience in this field of architecture. Putting people first has been a unifying principle in all educational buildings, and daylight and community-creating spaces are often key components in the designs. Creating learning environments that are flexible and community-focused requires a thorough understanding of how students and teachers interact with teaching and learning models, technology, and the space around them. By designing zones for immersion and communication, a variety of spaces meet students’ needs to change between different working methods, encourage knowledge sharing between various learning environments and subjects, and inspire social community. Henning Larsen understands that the physical framework of learning environments is of decisive importance for the ability to learn. Consequently, well-designed and well-functioning spaces for learning should support and inspire today’s pre-eminent teaching strategies. A successful educational building enriches its users, fosters affiliation, and improves the daily function and well-being of students and teachers.



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Fig. 14: In Albertslund Public Library, skylights fill the rooms with daylight. © Henning Larsen

Fig. 15: Frederiksberg Library Extension – underground but filled with daylight. © Henning Larsen

Fig. 16: Theodore Roose­ velt Presidential Library, exhibition level, visualization. © Henning Larsen

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Fig. 18: Learning outside the lecture hall at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. © Karsten Thormaehlen



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Fig. 1: “The Imperial Library and Rarities Kamer”. The Court Library in Vienna under Leopold I. From Browne’s Travels. © MSAO

Fig. 2: Interior of the Qatar National Library 2018. © MSAO

Ines Miersch-Süß

Libraries Architecture and Innovation “I have learned that if you want to look far into the future, you must first look far back.” – Lord Norman Foster – in Rolex Magazine, Issue #05

From XXL to IIL –Library Architecture as a Heritage and Future Unit – A Reliable Partnership as a Driver for Development, Exchange, and Innovation Library and architecture is a long-term story told by heritage and future as a close partnership for information transfer to the public, to the people. Therefore, only by presence of heritage we understand the future strategies of library architecture. As guardians and administrators of real information, libraries give architects the task of designing the transfer of information through spatial creation. Libraries provide tasks, architectures provide answers. This connection has not changed since the beginning of the printed work and its reception. Through experiences, new and growing information, and social change, the library is constantly challenged to change and develop. It always formulates new requirements for space. From these impulses, changes in architecture arise. New approaches to thinking pave new paths for spatial formation. Information becomes innovation.

On the Way to XXL – A Short History of and Outlook on Library Architecture Development The unstoppable development of the library and its architecture is reflected in four sequences over the centuries. Starting from the treasuries in feudal castles, their transformation into its own building typology, the renewal through spatial networking in cultural centers, the library paves its way into the worldwide distribution and anchoring in all cultures. This is the long and lasting wonderful history of the library. Its heritage, its starting point, the so-called Rara collections, form its foundation as treasure chambers unforgotten and continuous and are also local identity creators. A new challenge is announced: while artificial intelligence has long been part of everyday life in research and development, in teaching, business, and medicine, its presence in the wider society is still new. Artificial intelligence generates wide access to information. This can lead to a new wave of creativity and innovation as human intelligence adapts to this speed and draws new values from it. What architectures does this require? Libraries provide tasks, architectures provide answers. Ines Miersch-Süß, MSAO Architects https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-009

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A new type of building is emerging – the library

Libraries are constantly reinventing themselves

Fig. 3: The Alte Bibliothek (Old Library, also called “Commode”) on Bebelplatz in Berlin-Mitte. It was built from 1775 to 1780 by Georg Friedrich von Boumann after a design by Georg Christian Unger. The building has been designated as a historic landmark. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:POPPEL(1852)_p2.695_ BERLIN,_BIBLIOTHEK_UND_PRINZENPALAIS.jpg. Fig. 4: Paris, Pompidou – cultural center with media library. By Suicasmo – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91365114.



Libraries Architecture and Innovation 

Libraries are part of all cultures

Libraries rely on their cultural heritage

Fig. 5: Interior of Qatar National Library 2018. © MSAO Fig. 6: Rara Collection Qatar National Library 2018. © MSAO

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Fig. 7 and 8: Library. © courtesy of Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venezia The original nucleus of the Querini Stampalia Library was formed over the course of seven centuries of the Querini Stampalia’s family history and includes manuscripts, early printed matter, rare, printed editions, antique maps, and engravings. The modern collection consists of around 350,000 volumes and is continually increased. Moreover, the Library has the status of the city’s civic library according to an agreement made with the Municipality of Venice.

Fig 9: Auditorium. © Alessandra Chemollo – Venezia “Giannina Piamonte” Auditorium of Fondazione Querini Stampalia was designed by architect Mario Botta. Comfortable, elegant, and highly equipped, it is one of the most innovative spaces of the city. It is equipped with 132 reclining seats (66 in the orchestra, 66 in the balcony) and a stage for a maximum of five speakers. The auditorium can be used for organizing conferences, screenings, and video conferences.



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The M, S, and XS Libraries – Heritage and Future Stories in Context of Exchange When we talk about libraries and their architectures, we also need to take a look at the libraries that are M, S, and XS solutions in context. They are important building blocks of a city or institution. Through their indispensable presence, they ensure continuous development.

“Primo L’Incontro” with an Instance of Exchange My first encounter with one of the most impressive libraries took place in 1991. At that time, I was still a student, travelling to Venice for an extensive research on the work of Carlo Scarpa. After a few stops in the surroundings of Vicenca, I reached La Serenissima Repubblica di San Marco, visited the still preserved Olivetti Store on St. Mark’s Square, and finally reached the Palazzo Querini Stampalia, the registered office of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Carlo Scarpa had renovated the foyers and the garden of the palace between 1963 and 1965 with a comprehensive architectural intervention. On the upper floors I discovered the library, with which I immediately fell in love and which offered me space to deepen my research on Scarpa on the same day and on site. Since then I have returned to Venice year after year and have visited the Fondazione Querini Stampalia continuously. Scarpa’s architectural intervention should not remain the last. It was just the beginning of a series of spatial developments. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary Fulvio Irace1 said: “Four Buildings find themselves finally reunited under one roof and with a single function as a cultural hub and study centre continue the intellectual community: Three architects, Carlo Scarpa, Valeriano Pasto and Marion Botta have complied with the institutions of various presidents and curators, who for over half a century have plotted the course of an intelligent and gradual transformation from the original foundation to a structure present capable of taking on the challenges of modernity while never veering from the intransigence of its reiterated social vocation.”

In 1869 Giovanni Querini Stampalia established an institution with his will to which he entrusted the task of “promoting the cult of good studies and useful disciplines”. It is located in the middle of Venice in the Sestiere Castello. As a foundation, it grants access to its extensive holdings in one of the most beautiful Venetian palaces and today is still a place of tradition and future, where both are in permanent current dialogue. The Fondazione Querini Stampalia and its library are an institution of exchange.

1 Fulvio Irace in Mario Botta Querini Stampalia (curated by Mario Gemin) (Venice, 2015), p. 19.

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Fig. 10: Bauhaus-Archiv Central building with distinctive Shed roofs. Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung. Klingelhöfer Str. 14, 10785 Berlin. Finished in 1979 after a modified draft, originally by Walter Gropius in 1964 for a building in Darmstadt. Since 1997 it has been under monument protection. OBJ-Dok-Nr.: 090 50 377. https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Bauhaus_ Archiv_Berlin_5.jpg.

Fig. 11, 12, 13 and 14: New Interior Design by Architect Ines Miersch-Süß for the new presence of the BauhausArchiv Libary in the Middle Hall of the Gropius-Building. © MSAO



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The Library of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin Heritage architectures now also include modern buildings. The Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin is one of the most prominent buildings of post-war modernism in Berlin. Not far away is the Neue Nationalgalerie on Potsdamer Platz by Mies van der Rohe. The Bauhaus-Archiv was built in Berlin in 1976 according to a design by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. Initially it was intended as an archive so a collection of the estates of Bauhaus students and Bauhaus actors, the writings, objects, and ­publications, was created. These were to be researched and made available to the public in regular exhibitions. Soon the space “under the shed roof” was not enough and a new extended solution had to be found for the now grown Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung. On behalf of the Bauhaus-Archiv, I developed a new overall concept for a new architectural solution for the existing Bauhaus-Archiv building, the Gropiusbau, as the largest “Architecture Exhibit Bauhaus-Archiv” from the 1960s. Two competitions were held for the complementary building of the future exhibition center. In the future, only the Library of the Bauhaus-Archiv will be the focus of the identity-forming Gropiusbau. Continuing to work on a Gropius design requires a lot of humility and experience at the same time. Immersing yourself in the soul of another architect’s design requires you take yourself back to when it was developed. Since the building from the 1980s was built very fragilely according to the constructive possibilities of that time, a complex use for an exhibition building was no more possible. The existing building is thus profiled solely as an archive and library. The concept of the light-flooding shed roofs is the priority and is staged in order to restore the transparency of the flowing space from the hall on the Landwehr Canal to the central hall of the new library, which Gropius intended. Its symbolic architecture is a source of identity for the BauhausArchiv. The architectural design of the library therefore also has its main focus in the so-called middle construction. The high interior-recurring facade elements allow the library to be towered over two floors. In the middle is the reading room. The light, which cuts through the shed roofs, creates an optically impactful connection to the outside space. This elegance of understatement and functionality puts this unquestionably unique building of classical modernism, as the largest exhibit of the BauhausArchiv-Collection, in focus.

◂ Fig. 15: Bauhaus-Archiv-Pavillon and the Max-Bill-Pillar: Bauhaus related Art Works. The radiant Bauhaus pavilion, which Miersch-Süß designed and implemented for the BauhausArchiv in 2005, adorned the perception of the institution from the outside for a long time and with far-sightedness. The pavilion is seen regularly by thousands of visitors as an “urban eyecatcher” in photos with incredible Internet distribution. Even today, the pavilion next to the Shedroof views is the pictorial synonym for the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin. The pavilion has given the Bauhaus-Archiv a face, a simple identification for Bauhaus fans worldwide. © MSAO

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Rara Library inside the new Daylight Architecture of Domschatz Minden The starting point of this architectural project was the return of the historical library collection from the episcopal central library of the Archdiocese of Paderborn to the cathedral propstei Minden. The small Rara collection of books dating back to the fifteenth century covers only 556 volumes. In the context of the new architecture for the cathedral treasure Minden, it now has a new meaningful role. The architectural form of the new cathedral treasury as a kind of pyxis creates an effective presence in the central cathedral square of the city, and together with the town hall and the cathedral it forms a meaningful urban ensemble of different building epochs. The 15-metre-high building covers around 450 square meters and three storeys. Designed as a daylight museum, it serves the exhibition visit and devotion in daylight (although a cathedral treasury is of course never just a pure art museum). The only nine main exhibits from around the year 1050 are exhibited on the first floor, and their presentation is designed for the object’s own effect. On the second floor we continue with the parts of the collection from the period after 1500. The space is designed on the basis of a sacristy – i.  e. the original storage location of the liturgical device. The library is also located here. The basic idea behind it all was that the church treasure inside can be seen or at least guessed from the outside, and vice versa from the inside as it merges in a collage-like way as part of the city with the views of the surrounding buildings. Considering the limited size of the building and the extremely delicate, predominantly metallic, and very finely crafted main objects, the design of both the building and the interior was limited to a single material: metal. The visitor of the cathedral treasury Minden should feel an aura of modernity of the present day, in presence of faith. In the end, the decisive and formative element of Minden’s cathedral treasury lies in the daylight rooms on the first floor, where the medieval treasures, which stand for the values of the Catholic faith, are inevitably brought into the present and are in exchange with the here and now. In the context of a treasure collection, the library becomes a treasure itself and forms the historical link to the present represented by a daylight architecture.



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Fig. 16: View from the inside with Minden’s Madonna. © Dombauverein Minden Fig. 17: Rara Library in Minden Cathedral ­Treasury. © Dombauverein Minden Fig. 18: Cathedral with new cathedral treasury, Minden. © HCKrass Fig. 19: The opposite town hall is reflected in the Alucobond facade of the cathedral treasury. © HCKrass

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Fig. 20: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/menschen-frau-buro-surfen-3825558/ RF._.Studio.



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The IIL – The Intelligent Innovation Library as the Next Step out of Heritage from Innovation Center to Innovation Forum In times of growth of information and the change in its origin, society and its information actor – the library – need new forms of information transfer and education in dealing with new information worlds and new answers through architecture. New types of information such as artificial intelligence, data intelligence, and business intelligence are leading to an expansion of human intelligence through digital, fast, and constantly changing information as an extension of printed, fixed, and slow information. Dealing with these types of information and their use for a broad education of society now need new attention, clarification, and, above all, exchange. Only the overall package can take root in society and lead to renewal through a new world of information. The library as an institution is undergoing a relaunch and an expanded rethink to accommodate this complexity. Participation, contribution, involving the broad society in the age of information offers a new opportunity for new architectures. The library, as an innovation center, needs to be expanded into an innovation forum that will ensure the participation of the wider society. The II-Library, the Intelligent Innovation Library, is the next step into the knowledge society. It continues to promote the library as a medium of the printed word, creating the new marketplace of the diversity of action spaces as a complement to pure study into a forum of the knowledge society. The library, which has long since slipped into the role of an innovation center, will become an innovation forum. The printed word was once the beginning of the Humanity, the II-Library is the beginning of the knowledge society.

A New Friendship for the Awakening of the Knowledge Society Innovation and Information form an important unit. Just as old as the history of information, and thus the history of the library, is the history of innovation. Every renewal is based on information, every information and its processing leads to a renewal, whether as a small impulse of thought of the individual or as a great social change. The library is rightly referred to as the innovation center it has always been. That it is so directly called such today is a contemporary phenomenon: innovation has never been more important than it is today. This also includes the willingness to put innovation at the heart of all our actions. The library plays a special role in this. As an ­information manager and thus an innovation center, or better put a center of innovation, it is the starting point for this development of the future. The XXL Library, the large information store of printed work, is further developed towards the II Library of an expanded information world.

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What does it look like, what is its purpose, how does the II-Library design itself as an architecture? If we want to answer these questions, we must begin here: the history of the library and its heritage provide answers. It is about continuation and continuity as the basis of constant renewal. It is clear that information of any kind requires systematic processing in order to systematically generate knowledge from it. The experimental handling of knowledge and the exchange of knowledge take on a new meaning in the knowledge society. As servants of a knowledge society, the three levels of “walkable knowledge storage”, “dialogue and conversation”, and “laboratory space” as new structural units and architecture represent the Intelligent Innovation Library. An example shows how the resulting Innovation Forum complements the classical library as an innovation center and adds a new dimension to the effectiveness of information transfer.

Library Architecture for Innovation – Heritage as an Innovation Driver: The Japanese Palace in Dresden One of the outstanding innovation stories is told by the Japanese Palais in Dresden. It is written in three parts and over the course of 200 years. The Japanese Palace in Dresden, once a castle and innovation representative, then an enlightenment library and the starting point of the SLUB, today’s Saxon State Library, State and University Library elsewhere, grew into the Innovation Forum of Saxony. In 1717 August the Strong bought it for the celebration of the wedding of his son Friedrich August II. with Maria Josepha of Austria in 1719. The sensation of the power of the presentation of this castle and its prominent location on the banks of the Elbe with the well-known and unique Canaletto view of Dresden’s old town ignited a new idea. The first European porcelain, the Meissner Porcelain, which had just been invented in a secret laboratory, was meant to decorate the Japanese Palace as a porcelain castle in the future. The idea of an innovation presentation was born. The castle as a whole was intended to make the innovative power of Saxony and thus its economic potential visible to the guests of European royalty. The aim was to create new cooperation for the country’s added value and growth in a European international context. This idea, known as the porcelain castle, was not finished. August the Strong, the creator of ideas and their driver, died in 1733. It was only after the seven-year war that the idea of innovation took on a new form. The grandson of August the Strong, August Friedrich III, first king of Saxony, had the Japanese Palace converted and expanded into the first electoral and later royal library. In 1786 the palace became a promise to the public as a publicly accessible place. From this moment the Royal Library in the Japanese Palace in Dresden was one of the most magnificent libraries in Europe and joined the now universal opening of royal libraries in Europe. The new public library would be the driving force behind the new self-awareness of a self-determined bourgeoisie and the building block of enormous economic renewal and progress in Saxony up to the



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beginning of the twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, the palace was initially used as an interim for various institutions. Now the Japanese Palace is looking for a new task. The following scenario presents the Japanese Palais as an innovation forum and how it reconciles its history and future. The common thread of innovation will be resumed and the 200-year history of innovation will be continued. The former Innovation Palace as a representative office and library becomes an innovation forum. As the Intelligent Innovation Library, it represents Saxony’s departure into the information age and the knowledge society. As an innovation forum, it contains the “walkable knowledge storage”, the space for “dialogue and conversation” as well as the “laboratory room” as new structural units and as an overall concept. They are spatially and, in their size, equally divided into three levels of heritage architecture. The courtyard is traversed by a glass roof and creates a new information space. Here international guests of the country meet the broad society. Participation and involvement are at the heart of community building through meeting and exchange. Guests are welcomed and guided through the heart of the II-Library, the research level on the ground floor. The focus lies on the history of economic development and the latest technological developments. For the motivation of a start-up culture, digital and analogue research modules are created, permanently open to everyone. New information technologies of artificial intelligence, business intelligence, and data intelligence are presented. The German Centres for Research and Innovation are providing a showcase and extended platform for German research organizations and research-based companies in the II-Library to connect science, economy and society. The future is present. Upstairs, the co-working space is located in a variety of flexible architecture. Here, people meet and have intensive discussions about future development and exchange ideas about possible co-operations. Various partners form a team and new networks for innovation design are constantly being created, sometimes in a meeting, sometimes in a large conference or in the podium. The innovation laboratory is being developed on the upper floor under the roof. As a great “maker space”, new ideas are emerging here and are being expanded experimentally into innovations, which creates space for creativity. Flexible work situations offer retreats, lounge areas, or laboratory rooms. This is where the experiment finds a new site. The former spirit of innovation is palpable. The fact that everything from history, heritage, and future thinking is related is noticeable here in this once classical library architecture. As an innovation architecture or creative place of the muses, the Japanese Palace stands permanently for public use and for the continuity of a knowledge society of the Information Age.

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Fig. 21: Japanese Palace, view from the river, palace garden. © Jörg Schöner

Fig. 22: From the old to a new Intelligent Innovation Library and International Forum. © MSAO



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The Butterfly Effect is Back The new cultural center of a new generation in the middle of historic Paris, the Georg Pompidou triggered a world-changing view of architecture in the middle of the twentieth century. Francesco Dal Co2 uses the equivalent of the “Butterfly Effect” to describe this enormous event. Itself inspired by the new construction of the Sydney Opera House and its gigantic never-before-built or calculated construction, the Pompidou created new perspectives on possibilities and the potential of the twentieth century. Its multifunctionality as a forum for exhibitions, multimedia library, stage, and auditorium allowed a new creative networking of the arts and is a value creation in many ways. The architecture of the interior is the architecture of the exterior, as a total walkable house center of the historical center of the city. Emmanuelle Macron, French President, tweeted the message “La France – Terre d’Innovation” in September 2020. He presented a new hydrogen-powered Airbus aircraft series in the video. Even then, in 1977 for the opening of the “Pompidou”, it was the wing-stroke of a butterfly in France, which triggered a changed architectural development of the twentieth century all over the world. With the Innovation Forum in the Japanese Palace, we, as architects, are starting at this point and giving the “Butterfly Effect” a new meaning with a place where history is lived, where further thought is taken and the future is generated from it. The Japanese Palace and its palace garden are the space for innovation. In the garden, a forum for the young generations is created through twenty-first-century architecture. Continuity is thus experienced and visible. In the Canaletto Concert Hall, built as a chamber concert hall and forum, cultural diversity can be lived, whether as music, conversation or poetry slam. The architecture of a slightly curved outer skin contains a hall in the form of a shoebox for the highest demands on acoustics combined with a listener arena set up as an oval forum, which stands for a sense of community. The balcony and the roof terrace present a view of Canaletto.

The Big Potential for Innovation – Libraries in Context Heritage and future form a strong unit, because without history there is no future design. In all times, building forms and building typologies have evolved and developed. Today, the architects are once again facing this challenge. Many ideas can be developed when new, innovative tasks are formulated. The architecture of the twenty-first century will continue to think of the architectural philosophy of modernity as a SUPERMODERNE. SUPERMODERNE uses the potential of existing technologies

2 Francesco Dal Co, Centro Pompidou Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and the Making of Modern Monument (New Haven and London, 2016), Chapter Two, p. 15.



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and design as a competence for the transformation and innovation of society in the twenty-first century. It takes up the values at the beginning of modernity and thinks them further in corrections. SUPERMODERNE creates community, healthy living, and working conditions and reconciles people and nature. Architecture is a potential for social development. Making this potential effective requires courage, creative thought, and a flexible open-minded society that is ready to overcome borders. All this is fed by information and its use and rethinking. Libraries will therefore become indispensable and will have to be continuously developed further as buildings. Architecture occupies an enormous space that society bears. We must not, therefore, squander our role. It is an immense responsibility.

What about a Library for the James-Simon-Galerie in Berlin? With the James-Simon-Galerie as a new building block, the building ensemble of the museums of the Museum Island Berlin is to be given a framework that concludes the basic idea of the Acropolis as an architectural composition and also as a forum idea as a form-oriented concept3. As an entrance building, it looks rather poor. The scenario of a Grand Mall originally set with the master plan, which runs underground as a way through all museums in a short visit, thus also demanded a central entrance building. But even with the construction of this, questions were raised about the meaning and need, as each of the five museums has its own equipment of cloakrooms, plumbing, and ticketing, including book and catalogue sales. Master plans develop long-term goals. They provide guidance as an overall concept and are an instrument for adjusting and adapting the objectives initially set. While it was still an important idea to create a central entrance building in 1996, it was already outdated in 2006. Unlike the all-connecting foyers under the pyramid in the Louvre, the James-Simon-Gallery is decentralized. This development from the side means that the museum is always entered by its visitors from the cellar. The largescale entrance halls, the dramaturgy of their portals, are losing power. The decentralized development creates disorientation and unbalances the museum island in its original composition. The James-Simon-Galerie is a supplement. The James-Simon-Galerie had and has the great potential to complete the idea of the Acropolis in terms of content. While at the very beginning of the founding history of the Museum Island the idea of studying and direct interaction was still the focus, today the visit to the museums is reduced to the passive visit to the works of art4. 3 Peter-Klaus Schuster, Page 83, Bürgerliche Selbsterfindung, James-Simon-Galerie Berlin (David Chip­per­field Architects, Köln 2019). 4 Andreas Kühnlein im Gespräch mit David Chipperfield, Page 66, Agora an der Spree, AD Architectural Digest Deutschland Juli & August 2019

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Fig. 23: Japanese Palace with Canaletto Concert Hall, panoramic view from the Elbe banks. © MSAO

Fig. 24: The Japanese Palais is equally connected to the river space and urban space by the Palaispark and the Palaisplatz. As an International Forum and Intelligent Innovation Library, it becomes the prelude to a newly lived Agora on the Königsufer. © MSAO

Fig. 25: The Intelligent Innovation Library as a new contemporary building block in the historic centre of Dresden, the so-called Königsufer. As an ­international forum, it continues the idea of the Semperforum and creates a visible public space for the knowledge society in the 21st century. © MSAO



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The area of the Japanese Palais with the Palais Garden is a cultural heritage and continues the intentions of its origin to be a house for international encounters and innovation in the present. The Canaletto Concert Hall offers the young generation a new forum for joint debate, play and exchange. Embedded in the landscape, it creates a balance between people and nature, heritage and future, thus unfolding its potential for community development and shaping the future.

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Fig. 26: JSG Exterior Restaurant by Fridolin Freudenfett – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80381931.

Fig. 27: Entryway James-Simon-Galerie by Fridolin Freudenfett – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80381939.



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Study in the room is banished and can be found, decentralized, in other places in the city, represented, for example, by the libraries and study rooms in the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz. The James-Simon-Galerie has the great potential to be the study space in the middle of the Berlin Acropolis, like a library instead of only taking into account a place so rich in history through a columnar structure that wants to act as a formal framework. The James-Simon-Galerie, as a new place in the context of the Museum Island, where the library of the twenty-first century finds itself as an important building block, would offer a great opportunity to transform the museum visit from a passive to an active act. The wonderfully filigree-formed column aisle is actually a formally successful architectural solution. Imagine finding instead of just a restaurant a reading room behind it, a library for research and study. The outstanding literature and elaborately created publication on the outstanding collections of the Museum Island, which until now experience an unnoticed existence in the rear at the end of an oversized bookshop, could thus find a wide readership free of charge in the James-Simon-Galerie, which could immerse itself again and again after the visit to the museum in the depth of information on the cultures of distant worlds. In this way, the James-Simon-Galerie would find an equivalent that also takes into account the formal approach of the Acropolis through a suitable content component. Such a use would put the finishing touches to the James-Simon-Galerie. One of the most important tasks of architects is to show potentials of architecture that are of socially comprehensive and sustainable use. This requires tasks that are through to the end, the willingness to reinvent one another again and again, and the courage to build a value-adding bridge between heritage and future, present and renewal.

“Without a doubt. Design is and always will be able to create spaces where people can gather, though design alone can’t guarantee that a collection of highly divergent individuals will come together as a vibrant, communicative community.” Oliver Jahn, Future Talk.

III Building for the Knowledge Society – The Creation of Library Architecture Claudia Lux: New Developments of Library Buildings Worldwide Elif Tinaztepe: Designing for Evolution Jette Hopp: Engaging Architecture Marco Muscogiuri: Spaces for People Lina Lahiri: Public Space becomes Cultural Place Max Dudler: Places to Study, Flirt and Stroll: Max Dudler’s Libraries Stephan Schütz: The New Central Library in Dresden’s Kulturpalast

Fig. 1: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana 1571. Attribution: Sailko https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biblioteca_laurenziana,_sala_lettura_04.JPG I, Sailko / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux

New Developments of Library Buildings Worldwide A Brief History and Two Concepts of Reading Rooms Any discussion of new developments need a look back into history, as it may explain some features and structures of development as such. There are plenty of ancient libraries, famous in their time and their region. This short overview gives no room to discuss the history of great libraries like the Biblioteca Alexandrina (300 AD), the eighth century Bayt al Hikmah – The House of Wisdom – in Baghdad, the Tian Yi Ge library in Ningbo, China (1561) or early libraries of monasteries in Europe (sixth to eighth century). There are wonderful coffee table books on the most beautiful libraries of the world, on old monastery libraries and more.1, 2 A book produced by Shanghai Library, New library buildings of the world, shows the architecture of many beautiful libraries at the end of the last century.3 This article looks back into the history of libraries and focuses on special elements of libraries, on patterns that have changed or have developed into the present. A picture of the old reading room of Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana that opened in 1571 in Florence, Italy shows a wide room with long reading banks. We cannot see the chains under each lecterns for the “libri catinati”, the books on chains, as each book was an expensive copy manuscript. Though the room was wide and open, there were many restrictions on using the books in this library. Restrictions for readers accompany the development of libraries and it is a long way from here to a modern open area library, where people are able to touch and take out books as they wish. What a difference between the old library in Florence and the many new university and public libraries built in the 1970s in the Western hemisphere. They are open and accessible to anyone, a new democratic access to knowledge. The architecture of some buildings shows this concept of openness. One example is the State Library of Berlin, opened in 1978 in West Berlin and designed by architect Hans Scharoun. The beautiful open area reveals an endless view on a “reading landscape” filled with books in the State Library of Berlin, even though most books of the collection

1 Massimo Listri et al., The world most beautiful libraries (Köln, 2018).‌ 2 Guillaume de Laubier et al., Bibliothèques du Monde (Paris, 2003). 3 Jianzhong Wu (ed.), New Library Buildings of the World (Shanghai, 2003). Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux, Humboldt University Berlin https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-010

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Fig. 2: Reading landscape of State Library Berlin. Attribution: Gunnar Klack. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staatsbibliothek-Berlin-Haus-Potsdamer-Str-Berlin-Tiergarten-LesesaalMrz-2011-d.jpg Gunnar Klack / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Fig. 3: Seattle public library – living room of the city. The new library comprised extensive Internet services and new technology. © Claudia Lux



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are in the stacks. This openness is consistent with a change towards the user, though in the 1970s and 1980s the usage of libraries was not as high as today and in Eastern Europe access to libraries was more restricted. Very often the libraries reserved access to the collection for “qualified users”. However, during the 1980s some West-European national libraries including the French, the German and the British started to plan their new buildings but did not change their service concept: to protect the books from the readers. The National Library of France, planned by Dominique Perrault in 1988, opened in 1996. Compared to the reading landscape of the state library, here there is a different way of structuring the areas of a library – separated reading rooms around the book archives. The concept of reading rooms is as common in old and new libraries. These two different architectural concepts for libraries represent two different ways of library services – closed and controlled structure compared to openness and self-service.

Library Service Concepts Represented in Library Buildings In the mid-1990s the Internet and Google became available and transformed the world of knowledge. The end of libraries were a part of general prognoses. Many politicians around the world and even many cultural ministers no longer had interest in libraries. In China, some modern government representatives declared that there was no need for library buildings as all information could be found on the Web. However, the contrary happens in China today; during the last 15 years, numerous new big libraries have been built and are heavily used. Under the previous negative circumstances, it was a significant success to build a new Shanghai Public Library unified with the Science Information Institute, a mixture of public and scientific libraries. The Shanghai Library building opened at the end of 1996 and soon gained a growing number of visitors. For the first time in China, escalators, a model from the Rotterdam public library, led up to the higher floors of a library. However, this library concept keeps separated reading rooms on each floor to control access on different levels of the library. It is not the open, free accessible area of modern libraries. On a smaller scale, already at the end of the nineties, France was the first in Europe to start initiatives to build new regional and public libraries, called “médiathèques”. These new libraries were and still are wide, bright and open and embrace new media in their services. From Marseille to Bordeaux, the latter famous for having one of the first modern chaotic automatic sorting systems in library stacks, these new médiathèques attract visitors of all ages. This is an expression of the period in which these libraries feature, when libraries worldwide add video and other multimedia to their services.

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These elements have an impact on the internal architecture of libraries, in the structure, such as shelves, and in places for video recorders and other equipment. A number of large national libraries have special new buildings on the South American continent. The National Library of Argentine in Buenos Aires, one such example, opened in 1961. Testa, Cazzanica and Bullrich are the architects of this “brutal architecture” of the 1960s, but this building does have an attractive reading room with a view into the sky. Elsewhere, completed in 1999 and opened in 2008, Oscar Niemeyer’s National Library in Brasilia is a part of the architectural design of the new capital, though inside it has a traditional style. In 1997, IFLA’s (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) Section of Library buildings and Equipment met in The Hague’s’ newest whitecoloured public library for a seminar on library buildings. Here, the architect Harry Faulkner-Brown presented the ten commandments of library buildings.4 With the Library2000 program5 of 1994, Singapore became famous, and still is in the library world, for realizing the program systematically. The National Library Board constructed many new libraries for children, arts lovers, and for the public. They built new library spaces in the malls to reach out to young adults directly. The mall library idea spread worldwide and still has many followers. Singapore invented new services for the public – in particular programming that still influences their way of constructing new open spaces in libraries. Aside from new buildings, Singapore started to change libraries’ interiors into attractive places – even if this was in simple mall-designed, rectangle spaces.

Library Buildings’ New Development in the Twenty-first Century – Integration of the User Since the year 2000, an incredible number of new library buildings have opened, and a new type of library has developed. Librarians embrace new technology in their buildings and for their services. Seattle Public Library, built by architects of OMA – Rem Koolhaas, opened in 2004 and combined many of new high tech elements of the time. They installed many elements of new technology, such as the online catalog which freed space in the library. The Seattle library building is a breakthrough in openness as you can walk through the library between two blocks – like on a street. It really is a living room of the city. 4 Harry Faulkner-Brown, “Design criteria for large library buildings”, in World Information. Report 1997/98. No. 9, edited by UNESCO (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1997), accessed 5 May, 2020, https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000106215/PDF/106215eng.pdf.multi. 5 Library 2000: investing in a learning nation: report of the Library 2000 Review Committee (Singapore, 1994).



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The new library comprised extensive Internet services and new technology that helped with self-service in lending and returning books. There was a new, detailed book sorting technology, an open area activity room in the middle of the library, a separated but free accessible book collection. Escalators went up to the higher floors and led to conference rooms with strong colors, an icon, and a wow effect! Only the long and broad information desks were unnecessary, as “call your information librarian” by mobile connectivity was installed – a model tested in Rotterdam public library a year previous, in 2003. In 2006, Andrew Mc Donald published “The Ten Commandments revisited: the quality of good library space”.6 He developed these commandments into qualities and propagated the ten qualities of good library space – which still today are the key elements for library buildings from a librarian’s point of view. According to these ten qualities, a library building has to be (1) functional, (2) adaptable, (3) accessible, (4) varied, (5) interactive, (6) conducive, (7) environmentally suitable, (8) safe and secure, (9) efficient, (10) suitable for information technology, and have the “oomph!” surprising or iconic factor. Not much later, this new type of library building developed in China, a country that claimed to find everything on the Internet and pledged to build more and more new libraries, which would be bigger and bigger. Hangzhou library opened in 2008 for the public and their users were one of the first who successfully requested space and free access. A competition began to see who could build the biggest library in the region, with many new libraries constructed with more than 100,000 square meters. Shenzhen, a city in South China and a special economic zone, which developed the vision of a library city as well as a large new main public library, constructed 627 public libraries up to 2016.7 Guangzhou library with more than 100,000 square meters and more than 10,000 visitors per day was another very successful model. Its modern walk-through space and open areas with all kind of attractive activities contributed to developing the library setting into the new “third place”. The role of a library has changed in a world of Internet access and information and this role changes the design of library space. Based on the ideas of sociologist Ray Oldenburg,8 libraries develop their own concept of being a third place, a place that is not work and not home, and a place in the city or in the middle of the village that supports people to learn, to enjoy, and to be creative. Aarhus library Dokk I is one of the main representatives of this concept and is influencing many public and even scientific libraries around the world. Library 6 Andrew McDonald, “The Ten Commandments Revisited the Qualities of Good Library Space”, LIBER Quarterly 16 (2006), accessed 5 May, 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27710736_The_ Ten_Commandments_revisited_the_Qualities_of_Good_Library_Space. 7 City of Libraries, accessed 26 May 2020, https://szlib.org.cn/libraryNetwork/view/id-1.html. 8 Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (New York, 1991).

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Fig. 4: Guangzhou Library walk-through space. © Claudia Lux



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spaces are more open, more flexible, more meeting spaces, activity zones and experimental zones. Though a library is still a place for learning and research in the digital age, it becomes a place for teaching, activities, and creativity – a meeting place of a community. Since 2010 an explosion of new public and university library buildings and of new national libraries developed worldwide. Some of them still followed the separated areas concept, while others had reading landscapes and activity areas. Many new libraries in China, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Europe, Turkey, Kazakhstan and the Middle East no longer followed the old characteristics. They added new elements to embrace the library user. In Christchurch, New Zealand, people sat in the library reading or working and watching the surfers on the beach. This new development needed a new type of furniture and many changes to everything else in the library. The new seat cushions in the Qatar National Library started a discussion as some expressed the view that it was not the culture of the country to sit like this. Three years later, it was one of the most used areas of the library. In 2016, the IFLA World Library and Information congress (WLIC) formulated new developments beyond the third place: library design now had to embrace the community, or even develop into a participative library that is relevant to the library users.9 This newest trend meant that librarians no longer reigned the place, but the people, the community, took control and made their activities in partnership with the library, using the offers and collections of the library. Programs are always a part of a library, but now activities became the concept of the new library space. These activities created many events each day for different visitors: children, young adult, seniors, scientists, businesses, the elderly, refugees, minorities, and all kinds of different interest groups. The library was a safe place, especially for children and women, a space that motivated people to create something. New creative spaces were developed for the public, like maker spaces, who could request new rooms and a new design of the library space. This worked together with the literature, the digital knowledge collected in the library and presented in the digital services of many public libraries. In academic libraries, data retrieval, data collection, digitization and photography rooms, long term digital preservation, and new technology for paper conservation have all developed extremely quickly over the last decade and are important not only for the architecture of the network but also for the architecture of new service areas in university libraries. Of note also was the World Library and Information Congress cultural evening in 2019, which took place at the new National Library of Greece – part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center by Renzo Piano. The green library aspects could

9 Nina Simon, The art of relevance (Santa Cruz, 2016).

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Fig. 5.1 / 5.2: Qatar National Library. © Claudia Lux



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Fig. 5.3 / 5.4: Qatar National Library. © Ines Miersch-Süß

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Fig. 6: National Library of Greece, Athens – mixed event space and normal library use. © Claudia Lux



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be seen on the roof of the building, which resemble the roof of the Warsaw University Library constructed in 1999 by Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski – the botanical garden of the university. Green libraries is another important development in the international discussion, started from the IFLA Conference 2008 in the City of Quebec.10 In addition to those mentioned above there are many more libraries who have influenced the new development of library buildings and helped as a model for others. New building types develop with co-working spaces and creative labs to make people actively take part in science creation and learning. These included Gouda public library in Chokoladefabriek, Amsterdam Public Library, Birmingham Public Library, Aarhus Dokk 1, Helsinki Oodi Library, the Philological Library of the Free University Berlin, and National Digital Library Seoul, Korea, all with public video creation and digital room booking, and last but not least Qatar National Library with multiple elements of a reading and activity landscape. The development in architecture of modern libraries shows the new way libraries are working today. Such innovation confirms the words of Francine Houben, the Dutch architect, in Ex Libris, the wonderful documentary on New York Public Library: “Libraries only have no future, if they are seen as book warehouses.”11

10 Veerle Minner Van Neygen, An Agenda for the Environmental Sustainability and Libraries Special Interest Group, Milan 2009, accessed 26 March 2020, https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2009/168minner-en.pdf 11 Frederick Wisemann (dir.), Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (documentary, 2017).

Fig. 1: The library offers 360-degree views inside and out, ­dissolving barriers between the life in the city and life in the library. © Photo by Adam Mørk

Fig. 2: An oasis for reading among the media. © Photo by Adam Mørk

Elif Tinaztepe

Designing for Evolution It’s an exhilarating time to rethink libraries. The evolution of this beloved institution from a repository of knowledge to social infrastructure to innovation hub has gained so much momentum that despite warnings of its demise, the library has successfully repositioned itself as an indispensable value for our future societies. The institution that has facilitated exchange of knowledge for centuries is changing at a pace that is rivalling technological advancements, clearly aligned with societal and cultural demands. As cross-disciplinary discussions on what will characterise the library of the future continue, we as designers must ask ourselves the most important question: how do we design for cultural relevance and evolution? Dokk1 in Denmark, the University of Bristol Library in the UK and the State Library Victoria in Australia are as diverse in their response to this question as their places on the global map.

Dokk1: A State of Mind Dokk1 is Scandinavia’s largest civic library and represents a new generation of modern hybrid libraries where books are one of a multitude of offerings that facilitate interaction with knowledge. Conscious of the rapidly changing role of libraries, the spaces are designed to adapt, evolve and be appropriated to different users and uses throughout the lifetime of the building while maintaining their distinct sense of place and architectural integrity. It is about designing with purpose, thoughtfully, yet without being precious.

Urban Media Space Situated at a unique juncture between the city centre and the waterfront, Dokk1 is envisioned as a hinge, a place maker where diverse paths converge. A covered urban square for culture, media and knowledge exchange for the city and region, Dokk1 is also part of the ambitious masterplan to revitalise the former industrial cargo docks on the harbourfront – new landscaped squares connect the waterfront to the historic centre of the city visually, physically and mentally with library as catalyst.

Elif Tinaztepe, Schmidt Hammer Lassen https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-011

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Fig. 3: Dokk1 on the Aarhus waterfront at night. © Photo by Adam Mørk



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Dissolving Barriers A multifaceted roof plate boldly cantilevers above the transparent volume that is home to the library, which then rests on a podium with large sculptural stairs, fanning out to street level. With no front or back façade, the building welcomes visitors arriving from all directions, following the rotation of the volume and further reinforcing the idea of library as “the people’s house.” The building affords 360-degree views inside and out, dissolving all barriers between life in the city, the vibrant intellectual life unfolding in the library and the open horizon.

Inclusivity, Innovation, Connection Once inside, the open and fluid layout with stepped floors creates surprising visual connections between pockets of activities, inviting users to curate their own journey at their own pace. Bookshelves rise in the open landscape almost like buildings do in a city grid, framing “oases” and “courtyards” of different scales and character. This creates informal spaces to engage with media, make new connections around shared interests or get lost in thought. More formal, enclosed spaces are dotted around the building, offering opportunities to read in silence, to collaborate in groups or create in makerspaces. The digital is naturally embedded in the analogue, where all design solutions are developed from a human-centric, user-friendly and intuitive perspective to increase participation.

Spatial Diversity Varying ceiling heights are critical in the acoustic performance of the building. Dokk1 is envisioned as an undulating acoustic landscape – an instrument of sorts – that supports the immense range of activities and programmes that coexist. The benefit of this design feature is not limited, however, to the management of sound. From spacious vibrant zones that buzz with life to intimate corners for quiet contemplation, the library offers a variety of spaces to suit different tasks, moods and personal preferences, reflecting the diversity of its users. By building nuance into an open landscape with spatial diversity, Dokk1 acknowledges and respects the individual while encouraging social interaction in an informal yet deliberate manner with its design. Offering this diversity in spatial experience will be just as important as offering flexibility when designing libraries for the future.



Designing for Evolution 

Fig. 4: Double height space under the skylight at the top of the Ramp is often used for events. © Photo by Adam Mørk

Fig. 5: Visual connections through the building with the Ramp at the centre. © Photo by Adam Mørk

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A Stage Set The two levels of the library are connected by the Ramp, a series of platforms linked by accessible ramps. The Ramp was not part of the original brief, but was carved out to address a strategic need for flexible programmable space. A place of infrastructure as well as a “room-in-a-room”, the Ramp hosts a variety of functions including, but not limited to, conferences, lectures, author readings, collaborative learning, innovations fairs, exhibitions and political debates. It is a place to celebrate creativity, innovation and perhaps most importantly citizenship. The Ramp is a living stage set, always in flux, always in progress – the beating heart of the building.

Materiality and Identity The building is unapologetic in its robust physicality and deliberate in the manner it pays homage to the site’s former life as an industrial harbour. The external palette, chosen to withstand the harsh harbourside climate, is a play of subtle shimmering textures and reflections, while the interior contrasts this with a softer tactility. Use of light, colours, fabrics and warm shades of timber all speak to our senses, drawing us in. Big skylights act as “daylight chandeliers”, connecting us constantly to the elements and making us acutely aware of the changing light of the seasons – which can be very dramatic in Scandinavia.

Shared Ownership Dokk1 is the result of a strong interdisciplinary co-creation process that bridged different areas of expertise. Schmidt Hammer Lassen led the stakeholder engagement process with a multitude of users and interest groups linked to the development over the course of five years. Dokk1 was designed in close collaboration with an accessibility consultant to create innovative solutions for visitors with a range of physical and other disabilities. Focus has been full inclusivity and equal level and quality of experience for all. Although a public library, Dokk1 is also the most popular study space for students from all over the city, as well as a cross-generational cultural hub that brings together different interests and cultural backgrounds.



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Fig. 6: The new library will be the welcoming heart of campus with key views into the surroundings. © Credit: Schmidt Hammer Lassen & Hawkins/Brown

Fig. 7: The stepped volume in dialog with its historical context. © Credit: Schmidt Hammer Lassen & Hawkins/Brown

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Networks and Partnerships Beyond its traditional library function, Dokk1 is also home to a dynamic group of companies, networks and partnerships – most of whom collaborate regularly with the library. It houses a television studio for DR, Denmark’s public-service radio and television broadcasting company; the Centre for Innovation in Aarhus; and a citizen’s services centre, among others. As an entity that truly thrives on synergy, Dokk1 reflects the dynamic multidisciplinary thinking that no doubt will define our future, both in its professional organisation as well as in the way the built form accommodates these changing relationships so naturally with its spatial generosity. Dokk1 offers a calm refuge for those who seek a contemplative environment and stimulation for the curious mind. The library also fosters synergy between users, interest groups and organisations. It is a place to be alone, together and alone-together. It is a platform for innovation and perhaps, most importantly, a multicultural hub that has entirely changed the self-perception of the city and of its citizens. At a time when the role of libraries is evolving, it fearlessly continues to explore what the library of the future can be. More than a building, Dokk1 is a “state of mind” that transfers from built form to individual and back again.

University of Bristol New Library: The Extrovert Academic The University of Bristol’s new library will be a welcoming heart that transforms its Clifton campus and a landmark new building for the city of Bristol. Designed in collaboration with UK-based design firm Hawkins\Brown, it will accommodate spaces for study, research and knowledge exchange. The library will also accommodate the new Cultural Collections Centre, home to the University’s Theatre Collections, one of the world’s largest archives of British theatre history and live art. Similar to public libraries, rapidly shifting trends have dramatically changed the way we look at academic libraries. No longer just a source of reliable information, the library is a platform for knowledge creation that tackles the challenges of the real world. With diverse environments that encourage new ways of research and learning, including object-based, collaborative and peer-to-peer exchanges, the new library at Bristol is at once a cultural hub and diverse learning landscape, connected around shared spaces extending deep into the public realm and inviting the outside world in.



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Fig. 8: Studies exploring the contemporary façade, inspired by the traditions and detailing of the historical perpendicular style. © Credit: Schmidt Hammer Lassen & Hawkins/Brown

Fig. 9: Mapping the future needs of the library together with the users – focusing on engagement, shared space and desired behaviour.

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Reinterpreting Context The proposed site for the new library building is contextually significant and historically sensitive. Located at the crossroads of two conservation areas, it sits high on the brow of a hill forming a significant relationship with two other notable historical university buildings in the city’s skyline. While meeting the needs of a contemporary library innovatively, it should be in close dialogue with the local surroundings, reinterpreting the historic urban context, collective memory, environmental setting and visual and physical connections through the site. The stepped volume mediates the scale difference between the villas in the Whiteladies Road conservation area and the monolithic modern university buildings on Tyndall Avenue. The façade is inspired by the traditions and detailing of the historical perpendicular style while confident in its contemporary stature, with its oversized openings addressing key views in the city.

Designing for Desired Behaviour Going beyond designing socially connected spaces for teaching, learning and research, one of the primary goals was to design spaces for ideas to evolve. This required approaching programming from both a qualitative and quantitative angle, made possible by our very early involvement in the programming stages of the project. Initial visioning workshops focused on asking why and how. We mapped desired behaviours – thinking, exchanging, relaxing, and visual learning – rather than focusing on hard functional requirements. We explored drivers of change rather than room sizes; journeys rather than destinations. This gave the design team a more nuanced picture of the needs and desires of the stakeholders for identifying zones for future evolution.

Designing for Well-being As cost of living increases, putting extra pressure on affordable housing and thereby access to private quality study space, the library remains the singular place for learning and socialising for an increased number of students – their home base. With more hours spent at the library, it becomes even more important to design for well-being. The new library at Bristol makes this a high priority. Quiet rest and relaxation spaces are integrated into the high focused study areas, reminding the students to take a break. Places of varying scale and atmosphere offer choice while use of natural materials give a sense of comfort and familiarity. Natural ventilation and daylighting secure a healthy indoor climate, while roof terraces become outdoor spaces for study in fair weather. The atrium is at once connected and intimate, lined with loggias designed for collaborative exchange.



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Fig. 10: The Quad before and after. It is now a dynamic space that provides access to the rest of the library’s previously hidden spaces and treasures. © Photo by Trevor Mein. © Photo by Brett Boardman

Fig. 11: New visual and physical connections are created between the historical spaces, inviting the users to curate their own journey. © Photos by Brett Boardman

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State Library Victoria – A New Memory Institution State Library Victoria is Australia’s oldest and largest public library and the fourth most visited library in the world. Originally created as “the people’s university, a place of learning and discovery”, the library takes up a full city block and is comprised of 23 buildings that have been built and transformed over the last 160 years. Formerly housing the Melbourne Museum from 1906 to 1997 and the National Gallery of Victoria from 1999 to 2002 within its labyrinthine network of spaces, the Library has lived many lives and is a true eccentric, like the city of Melbourne itself. It is a library, a community centre, an archive, a museum and has some of the most impressive special collections in Australia. Most importantly, it is a cherished landmark and a cultural meeting point for all Victorians. Schmidt Hammer Lassen, in association with Melbourne studio Architectus, were tasked with rethinking and redeveloping the existing spaces of the library in order to unlock possibilities, create connections and provide a framework for the library’s ongoing and future evolution. Transforming a heritage structure into the memory institution of the future.

Creating Meaningful Connections At the heart of the architectural concept lies the desire to weave together the building’s numerous spaces through a contemporary and consistent architectural narrative, in close dialogue with the eccentricities of the existing. Before the redevelopment, the layout of the library drew visitors through a sequence of spaces that made it easy to leave the building without being fully aware of the library’s diverse offering. The potential of the spaces was unfulfilled spatially and programmatically. The new design concept creates a holistic experience, with a carefully choreographed and distinct hierarchy of thresholds and “treasure chambers”, connecting the various zones of the library physically and visually. (image 3.1) Spaces are revealed and made directly accessible, allowing visitors to move through the library intuitively, exploring and uncovering all its treasures. All touchpoints have been co-created with the users and library staff through an iterative design process, in order to meet the needs of future visitors. The architectural design concept puts users at the centre, providing an open, fully accessible and welcoming experience for all ages and cultural backgrounds. The remodelled Quad houses the library’s main information centre. Previously a dark, cluttered and disorienting space, today it is the heart of the building. In addition to its flexible workshop areas, bookable meeting rooms and digital creative suites, it also provides access to the four activity Quarters and the treasures that lie beyond.



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Fig. 12: Historic decorations uncovered during the project are left untouched. The design celebrates the authenticity of the building’s rich history. © Photos by Brett Boardman

Fig. 13: Children’s Quarter with its castle amongst the historical buildings invites children and families to explore. © Photos by Brett Boardman

Fig. 14: Russell Street Welcome Zone reflects the dynamic and creative soul of Melbourne. © Photos by Trevor Mein

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Seeking Authenticity State Library Victoria had undergone numerous redevelopments over the course of its history that gave the library a fragmented, cluttered and even abandoned appearance. After studying its history and understanding its important place in the cultural landscape of Melbourne, the design team decided to work with an approach based on discovery – peeling back the layers of paint and interventions and letting the heritage elements stand in their raw beauty instead of trying to recreate them. With endless curiosity and precision, the design team worked alongside heritage experts and statutory authorities to uncover the hidden treasures of the complex. Exploring the authenticity of the spaces became a guiding principle.

Unlocking Possibilities Nowhere is this approach more evident than the Ian Potter Queen’s Hall, the jewel in the library’s redevelopment. Here, layers of paint applied through the decades have carefully been scraped back to reveal the original decorations wherever possible in their raw, sometimes faded, but authentic state. The muted colour scheme accentuates the fine architectural detailing and heritage elements, allowing the visitors to create a personal connection to history. All modern mechanical amenities are carefully hidden from view, allowing daylight to shine through the filigree-patterned original skylights and fill the double height space with life, once again. A reading room by day, the Ian Potter Queen’s Hall turns into an event space by night, expanding the function of this magnificent space.

A New Design Line The new contemporary design language acts as a framework to guide present and future architectural works, while revealing and celebrating the unique heritage aspects of the building rather than recreating them. The new interventions are bold yet refined and elegant with robust detailing and natural materials that will stand the test of time. At times subtle and light touch, and at times relaxed and playful, they are in constant dialogue with history, complementing and contrasting the existing spaces, and adding an inspiring and poetic layer to the design heritage. The children’s quarter intervention is envisioned as a modern-day castle. Designed with creative input from families and children, the ground floor accommodates a makerspace and cosy nooks for storytelling, reading and exploration. The mezzanine is designed as a series of connected chambers for tweens who can enjoy being independent while staying close to their younger siblings and parents. All modern amenities



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such as nursing rooms, changing facilities and lockers are stacked neatly in the back, enabling families with children of all ages to stay in the quarter if they wish. Bespoke elements include wildlife from Australian nature and running tracks that signal the importance of play, physical activity and engagement for young learners. Just inside the historic Russell Street entrance that was closed for more than a decade is a new Welcome Zone, a warm, inviting space that gives a sense of arrival and anchors the State Library on an urban scale.

A Framework for Evolution Working with existing structures demands curiosity, precision and patience. It requires the architect to engage in a long and inquisitive conversation with the building throughout the process. There are almost always surprises in discovery. While the design concept must be strong and clear, the working process must be robust and ready to adapt to new findings. In transformation projects, the context is alive, so it’s like a slow dance. Acknowledging that the evolution of the building will continue long after the building is taken into use, State Library Victoria’s redevelopment was also about preparing the building for a future yet unknown and anchoring this present moment in a continuous history. It was about injecting the building with an architectural generosity and hyper-functionality that can adapt and evolve with time. State Library Victoria today is a future-ready cultural and heritage destination for Victorians, and a catalyst for generating new knowledge and ideas. The redevelopment has increased public space by 40 % and seating by 70 % and has returned the Ian Potter Queen’s Hall to Victorians after being closed for 15 years. With a suite of new spaces including Victoria Gallery, a brand-new, world-class exhibition gallery, the Pauline Gandel Children’s Quarter, the Ideas Quarter; StartSpace – a workplace dedicated to up and coming business, operated by the SLV, and the Create Quarter, the library now contains new typologies and functional spaces to research, create and ideate. Addressing the current and future needs of visitors, citizens, students, researchers and curious minds, State Library Victoria is the custodian of the past and curator of the future, setting a new standard for memory institutions. Looking to the future, public, state and academic libraries have more in common than what sets them apart. As organisations, libraries are no longer self-contained entities but work collaboratively with networks and partnerships – locally and globally, weaving together a strong net of progress and social resilience in their universities, cities and communities. It is therefore essential for the design to be based on consultations with a broad range of stakeholders – not only to identify needs, but to uncover the role different actors can play in participatory programming, space activation and innovation.

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Fig. 15: State Library Victoria’s several reading and meeting spots as well as cosy corners can be used to the visitor’s liking as the spaces are designed to meet the needs of the many different users. © Photo by Brett Boardman



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With designers’ involvement in early programming and ideation phases, they can help cultivate a strong shared identity and sense of ownership from the outset, ensuring that the synergy captured in ideation transfers naturally into the building. Another important consideration in cultural relevance is anchoring. Library buildings must have a deep and multi-faceted relationship to their context in order for the users to develop a personal relationship to the building itself. At the same time, they must open doors into a world far greater, encouraging exploration. Library design is about creating an architectural framework that provides a dynamic place for evolution and carving out space for connections and unexpected encounters, preparing the organisation for an exciting future. It is no doubt also about revisiting the book and celebrating it by rethinking the ways we engage with it. Design helps the library unfold its potential – as a place of knowledge, cultural refuge, connection, civic empowerment and innovation. Regardless of scale or scope, libraries must have spatial generosity and be safe and familiar while opening the mind and senses to new possibilities through unexpected and inspiring experiences.

Fig. 1: The design of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is both timeless and bold. Its vast circular form alongside the circular Alexandrian harbor recalls the cyclical nature of knowledge, fluid throughout time. © James Willis

Jette Cathrin Hopp

Engaging Architecture Libraries Designed by Snøhetta Promoting Civic Engagement, Inclusiveness and Public Ownership For 30 years, Snøhetta has continued to explore spaces dedicated to cultivating knowledge with the design of new libraries and educational buildings. Our approach has remained sensitive to libraries’ integral social function even as new technologies and modes of learning have transformed their spatial organization. Our institutional and civic projects give individuals the space to see themselves in relation to their local communities and their intellectual journeys.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt (2001) The 85,000 m2 library is built on a magnificent site alongside Alexandria’s ancient harbor in the historic center of the city. A 20,000 m2 open reading room occupies more than half of the library volume and is stepped over seven terraces. Reading areas and stacks are arranged at proximity at the same level, the stacks being placed at each terrace level, underneath the next higher terrace. In addition to the library facilities, the 11-story Bibliotheca also contains other cultural and educational functions including a planetarium, several museums, a school for information science, and conservation facilities. An open plaza and reflecting pool surround the building, and a footbridge links the city to the nearby University of Alexandria. The design of the new library is both timeless and bold. Its vast circular form alongside the circular Alexandrian harbor recalls the cyclical nature of knowledge, fluid throughout time. Its glistening, tilting roof recalls the ancient Alexandrian lighthouse and provides the city with a new symbol for learning and culture. As it descends into the earth and reaches upward to the sky the library manifests within its apparent movement, a frozen moment in time. Consisting of nearly 6,000 m2 of hand carved stone, the exterior facade represents one of the largest contemporary sculptural edifices in the world. Consisting of two walls, one above and one below ground, it is composed of Egyptian granite monoliths. The carvings are taken from various alphabets and symbols of the world throughout the past and present, covering some 10,000 years of history.

Jette Cathrin Hopp, Snøhetta https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-012

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Fig. 2: The carvings were done in collaboration with the artists Jorunn Sannes and Kristian Blystad and employed local stone cutting methods to create the facade. © Nils Petter Dale



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Fig. 3: Sections and façades of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The building spans 160 meters in diameter and reaches up to 32 meters in height, while also diving some 12 meters into the ground. © Snøhetta

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Fig. 4: The Bibliotheca Alexandrina © James Willis.



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Calgary’s New Central Library, Calgary, Canada (2018) In 2018 the Snøhetta- and DIALOG-designed new Central Library in Calgary opened its doors to the public. With aims to welcome over twice as many annual visitors to its 22,000 m2 of expanded facilities, the library will fill a vital role for the rapidly expanding city. As Calgary’s largest public investment since the 1988 Olympics, the library signals the beginning of a new chapter in the life of the city, one centered on the creation and innovation of knowledge and culture. The new building provides spaces for all types of people and activities—for social interaction and exchange, for studying and learning, for quiet and introspection. The building is sited within a complex urban condition, where a fully operational Light Rail Transit Line crosses the site from above to below ground on a curved halfmoon path, dividing Downtown and East Village. In response, the design lifts the main entry over the encapsulated train line. Gently terraced slopes rise up to the heart of the building, allowing for people arriving from every direction to interact with the library. Outdoor amphitheaters nestled into the terraces provide places for people to sit and for library programs to spill outside. Plantings that reference the native landscape draw Calgary’s mountains and prairies into the cityscape. Doubling as a portal and a bridge, the entry plaza heals the previously split seam between the two neighborhoods and re-establishes visual and pedestrian connections across the site. The dynamic, triple-glazed façade is composed of a modular, hexagonal pattern that expresses the library’s aims to provide a space that invites in all visitors. Parts of the pattern might resemble an open book, snowflake-like linework, or interlocking houses, anchoring the ideas of the collective and community. Most importantly, the entire building volume is enclosed in the same pattern, allowing all sides to function as the “front” of the building. The crystalline geometry of the façade is carved away to reveal an expansive wood archway that embraces visitors as they approach. Framing the entrance of the building, the form references the Chinook cloud arches common to the region. Created entirely of planks of western red cedar from nearby British Columbia, the double-curved shell is among one of the largest freeform timber shells in the world. Its organic form and texture bring the large building down to a tactile, intimate scale.



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Fig. 5: The crystalline geometry of the façade is carved away to reveal an expansive wood archway that embraces visitors as they approach. Framing the entrance of the building, the form references the Chinook cloud arches common to the region. © Michael Grimm

Fig. 6: Wood slats line the perimeter of the open atrium, shaped in plan like a pointed ellipse, serving as an orientation device for people to quickly grasp the circulation and organizational logic of the library. © Michael Grimm

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Fig. 7: Calgary’s New Central Library © Michael Grimm



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Charles Library at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA (2019) Sited at the nexus of Temple University’s Main Campus, the new Charles library anchors a new social and academic heart for the university’s diverse student body of over 39,000. Within its dynamic urban context, Snøhetta’s design, developed in collaboration with Stantec, reinterprets the traditional typology of the research library as a repository for books, integrating the building with a diversity of collaborative and social learning spaces. By uniting a plethora of academic resources, disciplines, and cutting-edge technology under one roof, the 20,500 m2 Charles Library stewards Temple’s progressive mission to provide equitable learning experiences. The landscape and site strategy capture this public-facing role, with generous plazas that slope up to the library entrances, not only inviting people in but also providing space for outdoor classrooms and informal gatherings. The building’s solid base is clad in vertical sections of split-faced granite, referencing the materials of the surrounding campus context. Expanses of glass create maximum transparency at the three major entrances. The soaring arches continue into the building, forming a dramatic three-storey domed atrium lobby. The building’s arched entries and expansive plazas extend a welcoming invitation to all visitors, and while its unusual geometry expresses a distinct identity, its massing is carefully attuned to the scale and materials of its neighbors. The lobby’s domed atrium offers views to every corner of the building, serving as a wayfinding anchor and placing the user at the center of the library’s activity. An oculus carved into the expansive cedar-clad dome allows light to pour into the lobby from the uppermost floor. The steel-clad main stair is immediately visible from the entry as it winds up to the highest level of the building. As people move through the building, this visual and physical connectivity allows them to maintain their bearings and encourages usage of all of the building’s resources. The serene, sun-filled fourth floor encourages visitors to meander through the stacks of the library’s collection. Glazed on all four sides with glass, with views out to the lushly planted green roof, the fourth floor offers an unexpected retreat that feels embedded in nature. The roof gardens provide a rich urban habitat for pollinators and a calming visual foreground to the views of the campus and city beyond.



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Fig. 8: Grand wooden arched entrances cut into the stone volume and announce a ­welcoming point of entry. © Michael Grimm

Fig. 9: The lobby’s domed atrium offers views to every corner of the building, serving as a wayfinding anchor and placing the user at the center of the library’s activity. © Michael Grimm

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Fig. 10: Charles Library at Temple University © Michael Grimm



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Fig. 11: James B. Hunt Jr. Library © Jeff Goldberg / Esto

Fig. 12: Generous open spaces connect all floors of the library and open stairs emphasize an ­interactive and social environment alongside more focused study areas. © Jeff Goldberg / Esto



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James B. Hunt Jr. Library, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA (2013) When the new James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University, designed by Snøhetta in collaboration with local architect Clark Nexsen, opened its doors in 2013, it straight away received the Library Building Award from the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Association in recognition of design excellence. For the design of the new building, the architects worked closely with the NCSU Libraries to set a new benchmark for technologically sophisticated collaborative learning spaces. It serves both as NC State’s second main library and the intellectual and social heart of the university’s Centennial Campus. The Hunt Library also houses an institute, a think tank, academic offices, visualization and digital media labs, and an auditorium. It is designed to be a decisive competitive edge for the university by democratizing access to the technologies driving our economy. Generous open spaces connect all floors of the library and open stairs emphasize an interactive and social environment alongside more focused study areas. A wide variety of study and learning environments and technology-focused experimental labs go beyond the now ubiquitous model of the learning commons. “Disruptive” learning spaces with colorful, dynamic furnishings exist adjacent to more traditional study rooms. The building’s design recognizes the power of chance encounters and celebrates the role physical space plays in the intellectual stimulation of its users. Technology zones are integrated throughout the Library as well. Interactive digital surfaces and high definition video display screens deliver both programmed and live-feed information. The Game Lab serves as a testing lab for the video game design and development program and provides students with a fun study break area. The Tech Showcase allows users to experiment with new technology and borrow the latest electronic devices. The LEED Silver building provides abundant natural light, outdoor work spaces and expansive views of the nearby lake. Many sustainable design features are integrated into the building, including fritted glass, and a fixed external aluminum shading system helps diminish heat gain while maximizing views and ambient natural light. Ceiling mounted active chilled beams and radiant panels provide heating and cooling while rain gardens and green roofs manage storm water.

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Fig. 13: Like a roman arch, where the Keystone holds the construction together and prevents it from collapsing, the pebbles are seemingly frozen in time. © Frans Parthesius



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King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (2018) A decade after the foundation stone was laid, the 100,000 m2 King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture officially opened its doors to the public in the summer of 2018. The new building and its surrounding landscapes provide visitors with unprecedented access to a wide range of cultural facilities. By commemorating the past and celebrating the future, it fulfills an ambition of enlightenment and cultivation in a more modernized, globalized, and digital age. The Cultural Center, designed by Snøhetta, is a gift to the people of Saudi Arabia and pays tribute to the country’s young population, who make up around two-thirds of its demographic. This is a particularly pertinent move for a country like Saudi Arabia, who, like many other oil-dependent economies, are focusing their attention on alternative, future-oriented industries such as technology, culture, and innovation. The project contains diverse cultural facilities, including an auditorium, a cinema, an exhibition hall, a museum, an archive and a library. The auditorium seats 930 visitors and provides a wide range of events ranging from opera and symphony concerts to musicals and lectures. Together with the smaller cinema, this is an unrivalled venue for the performing arts in the Kingdom. The library is a center of learning containing some 300,000 books on open access and catering for all ages and categories of users. The great exhibition hall accommodates large-scale travelling exhibitions, and provides the setting for social events, banquets, and conferences. Like a mirage that doesn’t disappear as one gets closer, the Centre’s main tower stretching 110 meters up in the sky is shiny skin glistering, reflecting the heat. Surrounding the tower are four additional pebbles. Three of them, the Library, the Auditorium and the Great Hall, are seemingly resting on the ground. The fourth pebble, the Keystone, is suspended and fixed in its position, leaning against the Tower to its left, and the Library to the right. Each pebble is unique, both physically and programmatically. Like a roman arch, where the Keystone holds the construction together and prevents it from collapsing, the pebbles are seemingly frozen in time. Reflecting the idea of cultural interdependency, the arch-like formation reminds us that culture is not composed of singular, independent efforts but rather interconnected forces and ideas that work together to create a strong unity.

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Fig. 14: King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture © Frans Parthesius



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The library is one of the few truly “public” places left, a neutral place and a safe place: a place where people of different ages, cultures, backgrounds can meet, especially now that the public square has lost its role as a public space for socializing, and the large multi-functional commercial and entertainment centers have become the main public places of socialization (also and above all for young people). – Marco Muscogiuri –

Marco Muscogiuri

Spaces for People Public libraries are relationship spaces par excellence, places of commixture and multiplicity: contamination and multiplicity of publics, of documents and their different formats and media, of the services offered, of the information tools, of the opportunities for meeting and socializing. As an architect, I have been dealing with these issues for 20 years, both in terms of designing architecture and interiors of buildings and in terms of theoretical contents and functional programs. But the public library model which I have been proposing for some years now, precisely because it is based on the considerable blending of various functions, is quite unlike the majority of public libraries currently operating in Italy, and has much more in common with certain recent experiments in Northern Europe.

Starting from the Basics: Which Functions for a Public Library The primary function of the public library has always been to act as a “centre for the dissemination and transfer of knowledge” and as a means to promote reading and to provide a support to education that is as broad as possible The new information technologies do not endanger this function of the library, but rather amplify it. The public library also becomes an “information digital hub and laboratory”, an access point to the multimedia universe, a bridging of the “digital divide” that separates those with access to the tools and the know-how of the information age and those who are cut off from it. And we cannot forget an issue that is becoming more and more pressing, the so-called disintermediation caused by the Internet and its consequences, and the problem of the reliability of sources. For example, according to current statistics, on the one hand 87 % of Italians believe that the Internet and social networks offer reliable information, while 65 % admit that they are not able to identify fake news on the Web. In this matter, public libraries should be at the forefront, not to identify fake news, but to provide the tools to be able to do so. Who else can give these tools to people who are now out of the school education cycle, or to older people? In the months of forced quarantine in early 2020, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, in addition to all health and socio-economic aspects, some other important issues emerged dramatically. Inequalities related to the digital divide emerged even more strongly. Online school lessons, aperitifs with friends in video calls, smartworking, Marco Muscogiuri, Politecnico di Milano dABC https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-013

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Fig. 1: “Vittorio Sereni” public library, Melzo (Milano). Alterstudio Partners, 2010–2014. External view. Photo © Marco Bottani

Fig. 2: “Spazio Volta” Cultural Center, Lurate Caccivio (Como). Alterstudio Partners, 2018–2021. External view. Photo © Alterstudio Partners



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Fig. 3: “Vittorio Sereni” public library, Melzo (Milano). Alterstudio Partners, 2010–2014. The Non-Fiction area. Photo © Marco Bottani

Fig. 4: “Spazio Volta” Cultural Center, Lurate Caccivio (Como). Alterstudio Partners, 2018–2021. The Browsing Area. Photo © Alterstudio Partners

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and Facebook live conferences became our daily bread. But it was not so for everyone: not everyone was connected in the same way, had the same possibilities of accessing the network by high-speed connection, had the same number of devices, or had the necessary know-how. Libraries have to be at the forefront of tackling these inequalities: supporting skills, providing access tools, and providing the know-how. Libraries must be useful tools against functional illiteracy, against digital divide, in support of families, schools, and the elderly, the weakest sections of the population. Last but not least, today the public library is also a very important “social gathering place”: a meeting place, against exclusion and isolation. In the IFLA annual Conference that I attended in 2019, the Director of Helsinki Central Library said one of the key ideas of the new Helsinki Central Library was that “Oodi” had to be, first of all, “an open, non commercial public space for families in the city centre”. I think this to be a key issue for public libraries today. The library is one of the few truly “public” places left, a neutral place and a safe place: a place where people of different ages, cultures, and backgrounds can meet, especially now that the public square has lost its role as a public space for socializing, and the large multi-functional commercial and entertainment centers have become the main public places of socialization (also and above all for young people). But to re-launch their role libraries must drastically change their spaces and services. Libraries have gone from being places of conservation to being places of conversation. Today libraries must be primarily spaces for people, places of connections rather than collections. It is essential for libraries to become multipurpose, transformable places, in which many things can happen at the same time, offering services for culture, education, information, imagination, creativity, study, and leisure time. In a public library people should be able to find books, films, music, Internet access, newspapers and magazines, but also concerts, book presentations, meetings, training courses, leisure courses, exhibitions, reading groups, and events of all types. Public libraries must become urban catalysts for the promotion of cultural policies. And it is no coincidence that this definition of the public library makes no direct reference to books and reading, even if this remains the “core business” of the library. This is because in Italy investing only in the promotion of books will not enable the library to attract the almost 65 % of the Italian population which, based on current statistics, neither buys nor reads books. But these are the very people who need libraries all the more, and it is not possible to attract these potential users exclusively by promoting books and reading.



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Five Keywords Towards a New Library Model Five keywords should characterize any public library project, in order to build libraries as spaces for people. Everything in a library should be based on these keywords: the type of services, the collections, the training of the librarians, and the design of the spaces and the furnishings. The first keyword is SERENDIPITY. For adults and children, the library must be an opportunity for serendipity, inspiration, to experience something beautiful, unexpected, exciting, to be able to bring ideas to life, to change the way you think or perceive things, to create connections, to open horizons. This can happen thanks to documentary resources (fiction and non-fiction, visual arts, poetry, music, cinema, etc.), but also through activities and events that the library can host (narrations, conferences, shows, performances, etc.). In this sense the contents and the library services, the way books and media are selected, organized, and presented, are essential, as well as the arrangement of thematic areas and library sections. The architectural and interior design are important as well, providing functional and suggestive spaces and being able to communicate an image of efficiency and pleasantness, at the same time reassuring and attractive: a fascinating place of memory and a dynamic factory of the future, a workshop of knowledge and information. The second keyword is LEARNING. The library must be a place of information, discovery, learning, and training to support research and formal and informal study activities. To this end, users in the library must be able to find not only physical and digital documentary resources, databases and reference services, but also courses, conferences, educational activities, laboratories, study spaces, rooms for group study, IT equipment, e-learning services, etc. In this case, both staff training and the quality of the interior design are essential. Spaces must be flexible enough to meet changing and diversified needs for use, but at the same time must also be attractive and comfortable. Not surprisingly, Deborah Jacobs, the librarian that worked with Rem Khoolas and Joshua Ramus on the Seattle Public Library project, called the library “the university of people”. At the same time, Jacobs also called her library “the greatest Starbucks in Seattle”. And, in fact, the third keyword is PEOPLE. The library must be a place of socialization and participation, a “third place” par excellence and a new urban square: it must meet, communicate, create, and consolidate the sense of belonging to a community, against exclusion and isolation, to promote dialog, social inclusion, participation, and active citizenship. It is not enough to create spaces for relaxation and socialization such as the magazine and newspaper area, to be integrated with the refreshment area: publics should be mixed together, creating opportunities for meeting and socializing in all areas of the library. Furthermore, it is not just a matter of creating some multipurpose rooms, but of conceiving

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Fig. 5: Public Library, Comano Terme (Trento). Alterstudio Partners, 2015–2019. External view. Photo © Simone Ronzio

Fig. 6: Public Library, Comano Terme (Trento). Alterstudio Partners, 2015–2019. The Browsing Area. Photo © Matteo Schubert



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Fig. 7: Public Library, Comano Terme (Trento). Alterstudio Partners, 2015–2019. The magazines area. Photo © Matteo Schubert

Fig. 8: Public Library, Comano Terme (Trento). Alterstudio Partners, 2015–2019. The “Nest of the toddlers”. Photo © Matteo Schubert

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the spaces in such a way that they can be flexible enough to be easily rearranged and used to host meetings, conferences, meetings, and events. Participation is strictly linked to the fourth keyword, EXPERIENCE. The library must become an experiential space to carry out multiple activities, where the user is not only a passive user but also an active protagonist, engaged with librarians also in the co-creation of cultural content, utilizing their skills and talents. Therefore, libraries must also respond to the practices of audience engagement and audience development, which in recent years all cultural institutions have been considering, both in service practices and in the design of the relative spaces. The so-called “experience economy”, which has an increasing importance in contemporary society, focuses no longer on the product but on the consumer, and aims to make the consumer experience “unique” and exclusive. Libraries that have always been places where it is possible to learn something that was not known before now become laboratories where it is possibile to directly experience something new, in the field of new technologies as well as traditional techniques and knowledge. In these digital laboratories users can experiment with new tools, new apps, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc., where there are workshops for the rediscovery of traditional craft techniques and training courses that combine documentary resources with experimentation activities, while user involvement actions in planning activities and services and designing of collections also feature. The last, but not least, keyword is CREATIVITY, the other side of experience. The whole library should be focused on creativity, innovation. and experimentation. Playing and gaming can be very useful educational and involvement tools not only for children and teenagers, but also for adults. In the library there will be spaces to take courses for leisure time, for recreational activities, for playing music, for videomaking, for creative writing, for storytelling, for visual arts, for designing a website or an app, etc. In libraries we should find an “hacker cafè”, a “fab-lab”, a “maker-space”, a “coderdojo”, etc.: a whole series of neologisms that indicate very different activities (manual, analogical, digital, etc.), which have in common innovation, creativity, and playing. This is exactly what happens in Helsinki, Aarhus, Copenaghen, Thionville and in many other European city libraries, but also in some Italian libraries like those of Pistoia, Cavriago, and Bologna.

The Library Place Last but not least, if a library is to be successful, the building’s architecture, spaces, and furnishings are just as important as the services. Since going to a library is no longer a necessity (as we can easily access an ever-greater number of resources in different ways), then it must become a pleasure. To this end, it is clear that the library must be an attractive place. Library buildings should be beautiful, user-friendly,



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attractive, and comfortable: special places which are pleasant to visit and spend time in. But they must be also easy to use, most of all to people that are not sophisticated readers or that are not used to going to the libraries. In this era of widespread social networks, public libraries must exploit the one thing that Google, Facebook or Amazon do not have and will never have: the physicality of a beautiful place to go to, combined with the competence and human contact of the librarian who welcomes you, as well as the opportunity to meet other people. To this end, the architecture of the building is crucial, not only to permit the efficiency and functionality of the services offered, but also to attract new users. As well as its obvious functional value, the architecture also plays a key role in communicating an image, a “perception” of the library. The library building must be able to capture the attention and the imagination, to remain in the memory: it must assert itself as an “urban icon”, a depositary of the identity of a city or a community.

Some Recent Projects There are many projects that I have developed in which I have sought to apply the ideas described so far. One of these projects is the “Vittorio Sereni” public library, located in Melzo (a small town near Milan, 18,000 inhabitants) and opened in 2014. The library is a new building of 2,100 square meters, strategically located with respect to the city and its other functions (city hall, schools, a center for the elderly). In this project, urban planning and typological constraints are re-interpreted using split levels, wide windows opening on to inner courtyards, sheet-zinc which encases the whole building, forming the roof and the façade. On one side, the library overlooks an inner courtyard crossed by a pedestrian and cycle path, and on the other side the parvis of the Church of S. Andrea, hosting an exhibition area. The flooring materials and design further highlight the continuity between indoors and outdoors. The entrance area has been conceived as a town and community lounge. Here users can find the more public-oriented services: the reception, information for the community and information on cultural events in the city and its territory, newly published books and material on topical issues of great interest, current magazines and newspapers, as well as a cafeteria corner. The staircase and panoramic lift, developing upwards with a large window panel that overlooks the inner courtyard, connect all the split levels: the Media and Leisure Section in the basement, opening onto an underground court; the Children’s Section on the mezzanine overlooking the garden; and the open-shelf section with a study room and a reading terrace. While the library of Melzo is quite a traditional library, that of Lurate Caccivio (a small town of 10,000 inhabitants near Como) will be a more innovative project, and will open in 2021. It will be a cultural center (3,000 square meters) placed in a re-used

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former school complex. The cultural centre will include not only the library, but also part of the citizen services, a “community kitchen” where users can do cooking classes or prepare food for parties and events, a fab-lab and a daycare area for children and the elderly run by a local young people cooperative, spaces for associations, two soundproofed rooms, one for the local band and the other for making music, a multi-purpose room to be used for meetings, conferences, parties, etc., a space for young people, and a study room that can be opened at any time over a twenty-four period. In order to significantly modify the image of the building (strongly characterized as a school), but avoiding doing too expensive work on the facades (recently redone), the project intervenes on the color and aesthetic characteristics of the facades, creating a new architectural volume of entrance, more attractive and decorating the facade on the street with a site-specific graphic work, created by Mooks, two artists based in Rome. The interiors have been completely redesigned as large and bright open spaces, on two levels. Comano Terme is a very small town near Trento in Northern Italy, and the library serves five towns of a Mountain Valley, with 9,000 inhabitants and many thousands of tourists in winter and summer. Here we built a new library, opened in 2019, just next to an old building that once was used for tobacco drying, and that will be converted into a residence and commercial space, overlooking a new square. The new architectural volume tries to find a dialogue with the historic building, interpreting the traditional typology of the double-pitched roof in a contemporary key. Horizontal staves of burnished copper completely cover the facades and the roof, with large transparent windows. The building (830 square meters) is on three floors, with the entrance from the middle floor in continuity with the external square. A long staircase runs along the glass façade overlooking the square, connecting with the floor below and the one above. On the entrance floor there are reception services, orientation and information spaces, as well as the news and fiction areas. In the basement there are the non-fiction and the magazines and newspapers areas: it is a very flexible open space that can also host events, meetings, book presentations, etc. In the basement there is also a study room, equipped with an independent entrance and toilets. Each floor overlooks the one below with a full-height vacuum, where there is also a glazed elevator connecting the three levels. On the top floor there are spaces for children and teens, with a Gaming Zone and a very special area called the “Nest of the toddlers”. The poetic and dreamlike illustrations by Elisabetta Bianchi enrich the interior spaces. The entire book patrimony is equipped with Rf-Id, with self-check stations. The building has a very high insulating capacity enclosure and high energy performance glazing. One last case is the library called “MedaTeca”, located in Meda (23,000 inhabitants) near Milan, opened in 2012. The construction of this new library has provided the opportunity to recover an ugly building, owned by the municipality and left unfinished since the eighties, while also radically rethinking the library services themselves. The new library truly thus



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becomes a significant social catalyst for the city and its community life. Although subject to severe constraints (the structure first and foremost), the project rethinks the container as made for the content, modifying the façades and the morphological and material characteristics in order to achieve an expressive architecture capable of communicating the new public mission of the building. Everything combines to define the function of a new “urban condenser”: the design, materials, and colours of the new aluminium façades, as well as its wide windows overlooking the street. As all floors have a small surface area, five levels were needed to develop the structure: to make up for this unfortunate internal articulation and to invite users to explore the whole building, each floor overlooks the adjacent ones and there are double height spaces with overhead lighting. The entrance area is located on the ground floor and the first underground level. Here we find the newly published books, magazines and newspapers, as well as material on music and performing arts and some topical issues; the first floor hosts the children’s section; open-shelf areas and reading spaces occupy the second and third floor; on the second underground level there is a conference and party hall and a warehouse. The building is completed by a study room on the first underground floor and a panoramic reading terrace. The internal organization of the library is so flexible that it is possible to keep each part of it independently open, including the terrace and the study hall. Much more than a library, the Meda Teca is really a “social catalyst” for the local community. Here people can borrow a book or a DVD, but also meet up, delve deep into interests and hobbies, drink a cup of coffee while listening to music, keep up with what is happening in one’s local area and the world, surf the Internet, watch a movie, research or study, attend cultural events, or spend enjoyable hours with friends and children, even the youngest, or take a class during their spare time. Currently there are more than 40,000 books available that can be borrowed and returned using the self service stations. There are silent and fully equipped study halls; meeting rooms and classrooms; a space for teenagers and cinema, hobby, and free time sections; a polyvalent area for exhibitions, events, and conferences; and the Job Desk and the Cultural Office. An entire floor is devoted to kids, with many surprises for the youngest and several supplies and commodities for parents (bottle warmers, changing tables, newborn baby’s chair, etc.). Great attention has been paid to energy saving, with regard to the technological solutions (using heat pump system and low energy lighting) and technical specifics of the façades and windows, that are high performing. The building was selected as one of the finalist projects for the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture 2012. The library opened in 2012 and was an instant success, with 10,000 loans every month and more than 700 users every day, up to 1,000 on some Saturdays. Indeed, the MedaTeca, as well as each of these public libraries, is precisely “an open, cultural, non commercial public space for families in the city centre”

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Fig. 9: MedaTeca, Meda (Milano). Alterstudio, 2009–2012. External view. Photo © Marco Introini.

Fig. 10: MedaTeca, Meda (Milano). Alterstudio, 2009–2012. The Cinema&Leisure Area. Photo © Marco Introini.



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Fig. 11: MedaTeca, Meda (Milano). Alterstudio, 2009–2012. The Fiction Area. Photo © Marco Muscogiuri.

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Fig. 1: Insertion of the M9 in the urban fabric of Mestre, with indication of the new pedestrian ­walkways. © Sauerbruch Hutton

Lina Lahiri

Public Space becomes Cultural Place Considering the Public Space around M9 and Experimenta by Sauerbruch Hutton

Introduction With every new cultural building that is built in the city there is an opportunity to add a functioning public space that create a synergy with the functions and activities within the building. This space supports a public function as well as the city as a whole. This essay will examine how one can exploit cultural buildings to create effective public space and how cities can benefit from using the architecture to activate and make a place out of the space. Space in the city is scarce and mostly subject to hard negotiation, therefore a public building is a possibility to achieve a valuable space enhanced by the programme in the building. The space can be situated in a tight urban context, embraced by the city’s buildings, creating a casual intimate atmosphere where people might accidentally pass by. A good example of this is the Seattle Library by OMA with its covered street square. A cultural building might equally be located near water or within a park, which would create a different kind of public space, influenced by nature. Contemporary examples might be the Art Museum Tate Modern by Herzog de Meuron by the River Themes in London or the Opera house by Snøhetta on Oslo’s waterfront. This view of the respective qualities of a dense urban situation on the one hand, and a plaza surrounded by nature on the other, is used to look at the design intentions behind two of Sauerbruch Hutton’s recent projects: the M9 Museum and Experimenta. In 2010 the Fondazione di Venezia launched an international competition to design a new museum in Mestre, the M9 Museum. The allocated site is very central and, until recently, had been occupied by the Italian military and the whole quarter was inaccessible to the public. Sauerbruch Hutton won the competition with a proposal for an urban regeneration project that would use insertions and existing restored structures working together to create a newly permeable and sustainable urban quarter. The quarter has five buildings, two of which are newly built. The main new building is a large, near-triangular museum formed by the suggested pedestrian route into a new piazza at the centre of the quarter. On the other side of this route are small buildings containing storage facilities and a small café? To the north of the piazza is a former monastery, the Convento delle Grazie dating from the sixteenth century, which was Lina Lahiri, Sauerbruch Hutton https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-014

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renovated for shop and co-working use with its inner courtyard now enclosed by a facetted canopy. Experimenta is the extension of a science centre in Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, which comprises spaces for exhibition, education, studios, restaurant dining and a 360° dome screen theatre. An ambitious project, singular in its goal, it is the creation of a private foundation. The commission was won by Sauerbruch Hutton in a two-phase competition and was completed in 2019. With the new addition, it is now one of the largest science centres in the south of Germany and the addition has increased the gross floor area by two thirds. It sits adjacent to the existing building, an old warehouse, on an island in the River Neckar. The aim was to create a new facility housing an interactive exhibition full of live experiments and audio-visual learning features, where visitors can spend an entire day.

On the Front Steps Cultural and civic institutions have the ability to activate public space in the way that churches collected people on their front steps, as they often are social spaces outside and places for social encounter. One may visit a museum with the hope of being inspired but also often end up talking to, or even making, a friend. At a visit to a library one has the intention of learning but the best ideas might well come out of chance conversations with ones peers. If one instrumentalise a new piece of architecture to redefine the spaces that surround it, then one could reinforce and strengthen both the communal space and the nature of the building itself. A good design must allow for many different uses and sometimes the outcome is different from what was expected, for example the stairs outside Mies’ New National Gallery1 from 1967 in Berlin. These have been recently loved by skateboarders and on Mondays2 they were literary adopted by large crowds on wheels skating the curbs and railings. Pedestrian routes change over time, thus a building interwoven into the urban tissue allows the spaces adjacent to it – and also within it – to take on a life of their own, not only for visitors to that building but also for local citizens and others who may just be passing through. One might even argue that the most important consideration when designing public space is to discover the particular social activity that will potentially create success for that specific situation and act as a catalyst. The Project for Public Places (PPS)3, claims that good quality public space should exhibit needs to have the fol-

1 Neue National Gallerie was drawn by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1968. 2 Public museums in Germany are generally closed on Mondays. 3 Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a non-profit organisation based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities.



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Fig. 2: Inner courtyard enclosed by a new facetted canopy in the former Convento delle Grazie. © Jan Bitter

Fig. 3: View of the route leading into the piazza adjacent to the former ­Convento delle Grazie. © Jan Bitter

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Fig. 4: Experimenta, site plan. © Hager Partner, Zürich

Fig. 5: The new Experimenta sits adjacent to the existing building, an old warehouse, on an island in the River Neckar. © Jan Bitter



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lowing four qualities: the space must be easily accessible; public activities are to take place; it must be comfortable; and finally, it must be a place that invites social encounter where people can meet each other and take their friends.4 Activities spilling out of cultural buildings, such as performances or dancing, use the programme to strengthen its public space and offer a break from the busy city life. Accessibility is vital for public spaces especially those in a dense urban setting that might not be seen until one arrives and entices people passing by, allowing a stop for a quick lunch or steps to sit on for a break. Both public spaces in a dense urban sphere and more nature-based settings require the other two important properties: those of being both comfortable and sociable. Public space around cultural buildings live in symbiosis with the buildings themselves and it is important that the buildings and their public spaces are perceived as a unified entity that synergetically share activities and users. A library or a cultural institute could benefit from having public spaces not only outside the building but inside as well, for example whereas a space in front of a theatre or concert hall is able to host open-air performances and public receptions.

1. Accessible For the M9 Museum, the associated public spaces are crucial as driving forces for the design. The scheme creates a series of informal piazzas and a main through-route that enables new flows and connections to take place. The M9 Museum functions as an agent of urban renewal whereby an educational institution and events venue is able to provide a point for local identification. The reshaped adjacent convent contains commercial units that generate revenue to provide financial support for the museum, also attracting a crowd that will spend their money, enliven the area and colour the atmosphere. As Mestre has no ambition to attract vast masses of tourists like Venice, this new cultural district is aimed very much at local inhabitants and thus must be easily accessible. The pedestrian route running from Piazza Erminia Ferretto to Via Cappuccina through the new museum quarter was therefore an idea that was conceived right from the competition stage, which then guided the project throughout the many years of design and construction. This and other new routes not only exert a positive impact on the local quarter itself but also help to animate the whole of central Mestre.

2. Active The square in front of the Experimenta in Heilbronn is scaled to allow for activities to spill out of the science centre, as well as to allow guests to sit down to rest and enjoy

4 https://www.pps.org/article/grplacefeat quoting William H. Whyte (September2020).

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Fig. 6: M9 Museum District, ground floor. © Sauerbruch Hutton



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the surrounding nature. The design is conceived as a sequence of spaces offering an experience finely choreographed between the building’s interior and the surrounding landscape. Views into its interior, especially in the evening, ensure that the spaces within the building are on clear display to those outside. It therefore becomes a juxtaposed public space, seen up-close and from afar. The sitting area by the water allows people to meet without having to purchase entry. The closeness to water offers an activity in its own right – to watch the birds, to play, or merely to enjoy the tranquil setting.

3. Comfortable Irrespective of whether a public space is set in an urban or quasi natural setting, it must, above all, to be comfortable. In this its microclimate is key, and so one must ensure that nurturing and protective areas that invite people to spend time. If designed well, the public space can become an important area in its own right, triggered by the cultural or educational function adjacent. In the more informal case of the M9 Museum these qualities were achieved by designing narrow lanes and a covered courtyard for the southern European climate. The space is also, quite literally, coloured by a rich variety of colours and materials. The coloured ceramic tiles are in 13 hues of red, sand and whites that are inspired by the local urban fabric of Mestre, and which give the piazza a real warmth and intimacy. Glazed surfaces on the tiles make the volumes welcoming and light. The adjacent convent has a deep red colour for its exterior and the courtyard is painted in a soft sandy tone, thereby strengthening the unique visual identity of the square also within the convent. In the museum building, the rough haptic texture of exposed concrete offers a fine contrast to the smoothness of the ceramic tiles, creating a memorable ensemble that is ever-changing because of the fluctuating intensity and nuance of sunlight in Mestre. In Experimenta, by contrast, its particular island location, the presence of water determines the quality of the microclimate to a large degree. The square is beautifully situated centrally on the island and address the river. It forms an open and inviting space that acts both as an external foyer to the museum, whose generosity is duly proportional to the large structure that enclose it. The ground floor contains public activities that synergetically support the use of the square, while a series of bridges connect the latter to the city across the water. The café is situated such that it catches the sun both from south and west. The generous outdoor seating area offers plentiful views over the River Neckar; indeed the entire ground-floor façade is glazed so as to allow for maximum visual permeability both to and from the square. The space is arranged around a ramp that starts outside and take the visitor in-side and up through the building offering different views along the way as well as place to rest between the various exhibition halls. These spaces are large and light filled spaces to have a public character and give the possibility for children to run, rest and play.

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Fig. 7: The M9 museum district is, quite literally, colored by a rich variety of colors and materials. © Jan Bitter



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4. Social In the M9 Museum quarter, as mentioned, a new pedestrian connection across this new museum quarter links Mestre’s main square to a busy shopping street in the south. All public activities in the museum – such as the restaurant and bookshop, media library and public lecture hall – are situated adjacent to this new public route, and therefore service the new civic spaces as much as the museum itself. The piazza thus creates an urban situation between the cultural/educational programmes and the shops and cafes located around the courtyard of the restored sixteenth-century convent. This revitalized city quarter has allowed the previous inaccessible part of Mestre to be transformed into a lively and comfortable addition throughout the day. In providing a welcoming social location, the development as a whole gives Mestre a new injection of life and offers an important local economic stimulus. The new square in front of Experimenta invites visitors and locals alike to stop before or after visiting the science centre, at the same time it offers space of rest and reflection for others who may just be en route across the island. The square – and the steps leading down to the water’s edge – creates a natural stop. The square itself acts as an extension to the science centre, allowing for events and gatherings to take place on its doorstep. A golden pattern in the ground divides this space into different areas, while trees have been planted to provide a shady canopy over the seating area. The café spills out on the square, adding social independent from the science centre. The landscape architect5 has worked with “green islands” bringing nature onto the cobblestone plaza. The island is well connected by pedestrian bridges to the city centre and indeed connects the western part Heilbronn with its railway station to the park and leisure area on its north-eastern side.

5. Atmospheric Both projects mentioned in this essay have one thing in common – the exterior space is influenced by the architecture and there is an attempt to allow the building bleed out on to the street. Through material, space, light and colour an atmosphere is created that create a special atmosphere and is site specific and related to the synergy between build and open space and hope to be a destination of its own over time due to the specific atmosphere created.

5 Landscape architect Hager Partner AG.

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Activation through Culture If carefully conceived and designed well, a public space can have a positive effect on the city that stretches far beyond its physical borders. Following the logic envisaged by the black-and-white Nolli map,6 in which public space within a buildings carry the same importance as open communal space and enables physical meetings in a world with increasing dependence on social media. One might imagine the city as a colouring book for which one is given the pens in order to add some colour to special areas of the city, to attract people to gather, to experience, to learn, or simply enjoy while walking through. Over time, this patch of colour then bleeds and makes the city’s coloured-in area ever larger, melting together into a polychromatic jigsaw multiple of multiple civic interventions. A public space can benefit from the adjacent cultural institution to activate the space. To allow for meetings between people, planned or spontaneous, to take place. When the atmosphere inside the building is encouraged to spill outside, these magic moments experienced inside are transferred into the public and, as such, can be used to re-invigorate and reinvent the contemporary and democratic city. Then one will have created a cultural place out of the urban space.

Fig. 8: Experimenta, ground floor. © Sauerbruch Hutton

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Nolli.



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Fig. 9: The sitting area by the water allows people to meet without having to purchase entry to the Experimenta. © Jan Bitter

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Fig. 10: The new M9 Museum is a large, near-triangular building formed by the suggested pedestrian route into a new piazza. © Alessandra Chemollo Polymnia Venezia



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Fig. 1: Jacob-and-Wilhelm-Grimm-Centre in Berlin: The library as part of the city skyline; completion 2009; photo: Stefan Müller

Fig. 2: Jacob-and-Wilhelm-Grimm-Centre: site plan © Max Dudler

Max Dudler

Places to Study, Flirt and Stroll: Max Dudler’s Libraries Like a cubic storehouse of knowledge, the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre fits into the urban landscape of Berlin as a formative monument. It deliberately towers above the typical skyline height of the city and marks the significance of the Grimm Centre of the Humboldt University as the largest open access library in Germany. At the same time, the architecture opens up space for an outdoor entrée in front of the foyer. As a city square, it is aligned with the S-Bahn viaduct and thus extends the existing urban fabric of Berlin’s Dorotheenstadt by including a further public space, a social meeting place for library users and city residents alike. The focal point of the network of public spaces in the library’s interior is the central reading room. Looking down in the evening from the uppermost terrace of the large, wood-clad reading room, the cascade of falling and rising levels unfolds like a landscaped panorama. During this time of day, the hall is bathed in light from the reading lamps that light up the workspaces of the people engrossed in their work. There is something magical about this image. It is the secret that the famous AngloSaxon libraries of the nineteenth century also held. The architecture of the Grimm Library translates the spirit of these rooms, such as the reading room of Trinity College Library in Dublin, into the language and architecture of our times. Beyond that, in the library there are numerous other rooms that, with different sizes and atmosphere, are suitable as concentrated retreats or as places for communicative exchange. The function is underlined by the specifically designed furniture. In addition to the single cabins, looking onto the cathedral-like reading room, there are workspaces for groups on the raised galleries in the foyer that are reminiscent of train carriages, as well as individual workstation modules that merge into a modern work landscape in the reading lounge, oscillating between concentration and communication. Each individual library building designed by Max Dudler is a unique one-off that was developed out of its particular location and creates a special relationship with the surrounding city. At the same time the designs all are based on several basic valid ideas on libraries as a building type: there is a similarity between the relationship of the letter and the line, between book and shelf, between shelf and building. As an abstract translation, this formal similarity of the architecture, of floor plan, cut and façade fed into the additively conceived architecture of the Diocesan Library in Münster. In the façade the typology of the bookshelf, whose form is in turn related to that of a book, is thematized with deeply recessed openings. The simplicity of the module developed Max Dudler, Max Dudler Architects https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-015

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Fig. 3: Jacob-and-Wilhelm-Grimm-Centre in Berlin: Reading Room; photo: Stefan Müller



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from the book-form and the logic and consistency of the resulting architectonic form imbues the building with its extraordinary tranquillity and implicit nature. From an urban planning perspective, a place has been created that takes into account its role as one of the major German libraries specializing in theology and its intensive use by a wide array of users. The contemporary architecture connects with the historical buildings into a new ensemble, creating a path into the future for the 600-year-old history of the library, with its internationally significant collections. Out of the combination of old and new building elements and their positioning, new public urban spaces are created as courtyard, garden, pathway, and cloister. The three structures that have been created – the library itself and the two administrative buildings – deliberately turn away from the previous cityscape, instead orienting themselves on the pre-existing orthogonal layout of the neighboring seminary and church, thus standing out unmistakably from the urban fabric as an ensemble. In Heidenheim the new build of the city library also takes on a strong urban planning role. The previously inaccessible site of a former penal institution divided the city and appeared as a barrier between the heterogenous post-war architecture in the east and the old city in the west. The positioning of the city library building now creates a bridge between these two urban areas and connects the two architectural time layers of Heidenheim. As an urban figure, the building integrates the surrounding scales, proportionally referring to the gabled houses of the adjacent old town. Between two rising “heads”, an urban landscape of smaller “houses” stretches out. The transformation of the historically grown city thus results in a sculptural building  – a city silhouette that can be read as part of the urban texture and at the same time as a formative solitaire. For the city, the building opens up a new public space that designates a special place; in this case a municipal library, which also combines under its roof an integrative café, an event hall, and a media centre open to the public. The interior spaces, with their different functional orientations and atmospheres, develop in an almost scenically arranged sequence starting from the public forecourt. The actual library area extends as a column-free space continuum of high library halls and low cabinets over the entire second floor and forms the definitive, striking silhouette of the building. The relevance of the library as a site for concentrated knowledge and for academic work can be best experienced in the reading room. The reading room is the place where the logic of our buildings converges. This is where communal learning but also individual study should be possible. In the Folkwang library in Essen-Werden the reading room is exactly – true to the ideal – at the center of the building. In the floor plan and cross section, the functional areas and shelves are grouped around it as layers of space. Conceptionally, the music library realises the idea of a jewellery box or casket: a representative outer shell protects the precious inner core. But in addition to the reading room the books themselves are naturally also part of this precious content. The opacity of the sections of the façade made of stone glass allows for the interior



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Fig. 4: Diocesan Library in Munster: The Cloister; completion 2005; photo: Stefan Müller

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Fig. 5: Diocesan Library in Munster: floor plan ground floor © Max Dudler

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Fig. 6: Sketch for City Library Heidenheim, 2013 © Max Dudler

Fig. 7: Sketch for City Library Heidenheim, 2013 © Max Dudler



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Fig. 8: City Library Heidenheim; ­completion 2017; photo: Stefan Müller

Fig. 9: City Library Heidenheim: Reading sculpture for children; photo: Stefan Müller

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Fig. 10: City Library Heidenheim: Spatial interconnections of the library floor and the non-book area; photo: Stefan Müller

Fig. 11: City Library Heidenheim: Library area around the open shaft to the second floor; photo: Stefan Müller



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spaces to be lit while at the same time protecting the books from sun exposure. The design of the façade was developed together with the photographer Stefan Müller. Each pane has a large-format photograph of a quarry imprinted, bathing the interior in a soft and filtered light. From the outside it is possible to see the silhouettes of the library’s users. In the evening the library begins to glow and illuminates the grand forecourt, which focuses the ensemble. Folkwang University of the Arts is the arts and music college of North Rhine-Westphalia and has its headquarters in a former Benedictine abbey. As a result of the demolition of a hospital building that was added later, the baroque ensemble had lost its equilibrium. Without reproducing the old building, the library in its monolithic form closes the southern side of the central courtyard structure, thus restoring the geometry of the complex. Typologically, the State and City Library of Augsburg adopts a special role – it was, in its time, the first truly public (in the sense of also being open to non-scholars) library – specifically designed for the presentation of its collections and most valuable items. Its neo-baroque architecture emphasizes its character as a representative building. It presents itself to the city with a clear, symmetrically structured façade with magnificent orangery windows. Max Dudler’s design for the extension takes up design features from the existing representative architecture and translates them into a distilled contemporary language. The new building adopts the symmetry and axis of the existing edifice and reflects this in its cubature. Inside, the building’s central urban axis is continued and gains emphasis through the historic staircase at the heart of its design. The magnificent staircase will become the future core of a coherent ensemble of old and new. The clear focus on the library’s function as an exhibition building is maintained. At the same time, the extension will give the library an additional new face as a forward-looking archive and research library. While the existing building can be understood as representative of the cultural heritage the stored collection stands for, the new building reflects the active engagement with this heritage, i.  e. its future. The planned new Central Library of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen takes into account the fact that, as “stores of information”, libraries always represent a fragment of the larger whole. As an architectural-conceptual background, a uniform structure of spatial pillars was thus conceived, representing a collection of knowledge that is in theory infinitely expandable. In this way, this library presents itself, so to speak, as a section of an infinite, universal library. The design of the structure creates a spatial framework in which library life can develop freely around the pillars. The principle of unambiguousness stands in exciting contrast to this undirected, infinite structure. A cascade staircase with accompanying atriums cut at different depths stretches as a spatial diagonal across the central library. The resulting visual connection establishes a clear orientation within the building pointing at the same time towards the emerging campus. The open interior of the design is a reaction to the radical change that the library as an institution has undergone over the last decades,

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Fig. 12: Folkwang Library in Essen: Evening view; completion 2012; photo: Stefan Müller



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Fig. 13: Folkwang Library: view of the facade from the interior; photo: Stefan Müller

Fig. 14: Folkwang Library: Interior detail; photo: Stefan Müller



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Fig. 15: Folkwang Library: Library building with main building of the Folkwang University of the Arts; photo: Stefan Müller

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Fig. 16: State and City Library of Augsburg: draft; competition 2016, 1. Prize, Planning Phase © Max Dudler

8.16 Cimeliensaal 1 55,02 m2

228,13 m2

8.15 Magazin 3.OG 228,17 m2

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3.5 Freihand 300 Zeitschriften 23,42 m2

3.4 Freihand Bücher 167,04 m2

Fig. 17: State and City Library of Augsburg: floor plan © Max Dudler

3.6 Reprographie 9,55 m2



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Fig. 18: Central Library of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen: draft, view of the reading terrace; competition 2015, 1. Prize, Planning Phase © Max Dudler

+16.7 m

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Fig. 19: Central Library of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen: Sections © Max Dudler

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Fig. 20: Design for Central and State Library Berlin; competition 2013, 3. Prize © Max Dudler

Fig. 21: Design for Central and State Library Berlin: Interior space © Max Dudler



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from its traditional “storing” function to its role as a social place, and is thus able to respond flexibly to future developments. Our design for the new ZLB (Central and State Library) in Berlin creates a fitting counterweight to the elemental powers of the dominant airport building and the broad, over two-kilometre-long runway. The library conjures up an urban sculpture visible from every direction. Like giant screens, the reading rooms reach into space, opening up views over the entire city. Unlike the airport building, the new State Library does not represent a gesture of power, but rather develops a form of dialogue and relationship. Like a funnel, an open promenade leads visitors to the building from the ground floor upwards, where all the functions of the library are grouped together in a lightbathed eight-floor hall. The homogenous bronze coloured façade design, uniting all the functional aspects of the building, lends the library its special aura. This is possible due to the use of fine vertical metal lamellae, which allow unencumbered views, while still protecting the books and readers from direct sunlight. The matt sheen of the library during the day is transformed in the evening hours into a radiant glow.

Fig. 1: Overall view, © Christian Gahl

Stephan Schütz

The New Central Library in Dresden’s Kulturpalast Culture buildings are focal points of urban life, which are deliberately used in that function as instruments for the purpose of controlling and influencing urban development and marketing. In addition to concert halls and museums, libraries―as public educational facilities with a high footfall and far-reaching appeal―are one of the foremost types of building intended to re-establish social context with the help of architecture in order to counter the tendency towards mono-functionality of inner cities and to reinforce the importance of public versus virtual space. However, libraries are undergoing noticeable change, not only in the urban context, but also in their function and internal organization: digital media need to be archived and presented and the spectrum of users’ changes in line with the demographic dynamics of society and the new cultures of learning of their various target groups. In terms of the architecture of libraries, this has proven to be a development that is quite ambivalent and far from complete, a development that moves in the field of tension between educational mandate and spectacular event, “between dusty book depository and urban icon”, as was written in an architectural journal. As a practice, gmp · von Gerkan, Marg and Partners views this trend towards sensationalist events in the public realm with considerable reservation; after all, over the last 50 years we have seen many such fashions come and go. Architecture should be conceptualized, calculated, and designed for much longer periods. Therefore, “building on old foundations”, as was the title of a large exhibition by our practice on the occasion of the Architecture Biennale in Venice, is increasingly becoming the norm. The conversion of the Kulturpalast in Dresden is a point in case, because its architecture―the idea and basic concept―has turned out to have greater longevity than the building materials, the internal spaces, and the specific functions. It therefore was a courageous and correct decision by the City of Dresden to opt for preserving and continuing the development of a place and its identity rather than following the trend towards spectacular “architectural fireworks” that inevitably requires a significant period during which citizens can get used to this. At the heart of the city, the Kulturpalast is part of Dresden’s identity; its shell has now been reconstructed and, at the same time, its internal functions have been reinvented, so to speak. This transformation of the venue is characterized by the fact that rather than creating a large multipurpose room that serves all functions, albeit none properly, there are now a number of individual components with specific rooms―much like in the original concept―serving a wide variety of target groups around the clock, and thereby ensurStephan Schütz,gmp · von Gerkan, Marg und Partners Architects https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-016

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Fig. 2: Study desks, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 3: Libary foyer with reading lounge on the 3rd floor, © Christian Gahl



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ing that the place is continually in use. As was specified in the brief for the architectural competition, these different functions include the new concert hall for the Dresden Philharmonie, the new Central Library of the city libraries, the Herkuleskeule cabaret, the Office of the Capital of Culture, as well as galleries and eateries. As part of the refurbishment, it was possible to design the respective spaces in the appropriate size, position, orientation, proportion, acoustics, and lighting to suit the various functions. For us as architects it was a special challenge to define the space requirements for these various functions and to then try to fit all these different rooms into the existing building shell. It seems obvious to us that the unique central position of the Kulturpalast between Altmarkt, the Schloss, and Neumarkt calls for a venue with many functions which, through its spatial and conceptual openness, is once again becoming a meeting place for citizens. For this reason the three main cultural functions―concert hall, library, and cabaret―are all accessed from the large foyer to the south that faces Altmarkt square and―in this way, with its multi-functionality―forms an extension to the public space. Via the two so-called butterfly stairwells, this main entrance hall is also accessible from the entrances at Schlossstrasse and Galeriestrasse. In its recreated layout, the Central Library wraps around the internal concert hall on the second and third floors. This arrangement strengthens the library in its role as the second main function; at the same time, the clear symmetrical layout reinforces the idea of the historic design. Last but not least, the library is spread out in a rather unusual layout, as it does not have its own center but is arranged along the periphery of the building, facing the city. Access to the new Central Library is via the key focal point of the entire building, the top level of the foyer, which is both the central information and distribution point and the reading area, with a spectacular view across Altmarkt square. Starting from there, different user groups can access a wide range of functions in varied room sequences: reading rooms with open access areas and attractive desks directly adjacent to the facades, reading lounges, group work rooms, and training and consultation rooms. In total, the library provides 500 places. Internally, the two levels of the library are connected via two elevators and two stairwells in the area of the former side stages, and the administration rooms are located on the north side of both levels and in the mezzanine floor. The original ceiling construction in the former studio stage on the second floor has been retained and the space is used as a media library. Similarly, the existing so-called “Kranichdecke” (crane ceiling) in the reading room on the third floor has been integrated into the new design. In terms of the materials, the rooms have been designed in a simple understated style, reflecting the previous fabric. The color of the floor finishes is based on the historic red of the original period, whereas walls, ceilings, and furniture―the latter was specifically designed by gmp―are kept in contrasting black and white. As part of this design, recessed areas of the rooms―window reveals, niches for the shelves, and also the inner faces of tables and freestanding shelving, which generally appear darker in angled lighting―are offset in black in order to reinforce the spatial effect of depth.

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Fig. 4: Reading room with “Kranich” ceiling on the 3rd floor, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 5: Libary foyer with reading lounge on the 3rd floor, © Christian Gahl



Fig. 6: Library, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 7: Media library, © Christian Gahl

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Fig. 8: Foyer on the 2nd floor, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 9: Main foyer on the 1st floor, © Christian Gahl



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Overall, the city’s Central Library as an integrated part of the Kulturpalast benefits from its central position in Dresden’s inner city and, by the same token, significantly enlivens its neighborhood as a public institution with all-day opening hours, one that is frequented by different age and interest groups. In this way, the new concept of the Kulturpalast makes it into a center of art and knowledge, a place for meeting and communication, a place that inspires many people and does justice to Dresden’s international standing.

Fig. 10: Sketch, © gmp Architekten / Stephan Schütz

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Kulturhauptstadt Dresden Schlossstraße, 2 01067 Dresden

27.1

1.Obergeschoss

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Fig. 11: Concert hall, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 12: Floor plan level 01, © gmp Architects



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gmp

esden 067 Dresden

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Fig. 13: The hall has seating for a 1750-strong audience, © Christian Gahl

Fig. 14: Floor plan level 02, © gmp Architects

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Fig. 15: Practice stage, © Christian Gahl



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Oliver Jahn, Claudia Lux, Dante Bonuccelli on Future Talk at First International Library Summit, Venice, October 4, 2019. © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

IV Future Talk Professor Claudia Lux asks six questions; ­ Conversation with Dante Bonuccelli and Oliver Jahn

Professor Claudia Lux asks six questions; ­Conversation with Dante Bonuccelli and Oliver Jahn Claudia Lux: In your life, what kind of connections did you have to libraries? Oliver Jahn: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Even before I came across this quotation by legendary writer Jorge Luise Borges, who became director of the Argentine national library and lost his sight in later life, libraries had always been places to which I was magically attracted. That began in my childhood, when we – my two younger brothers, my mother (a bookseller) and I – would regularly visit the lending library of our small home town and return with a laundry basket full of reading material. It then continued at college, where the university libraries were my favorite places to be. And to this day libraries (and bookstores) of all stripes and in all corners of the world still hold an irresistible fascination for me, both in terms of their contents and their forms, be they historic or contemporary. As a bibliophile reader and collector, I experience these places (ditto my own sizable home library) in the guise of a “physiognomist of the world of objects”, as the cultural philosopher Walter Benjamin puts it in his 1931 essay “Unpacking My Library”. “To a true collector, the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth,” writes Benjamin. It’s a sentiment that informs the way I view books and thus also libraries. For one short, magical, almost metabolic moment, they succeed in pulling off that old demiurgic trick: via the printing of ink on paper, a world is brought to life that may have ceased to exist long ago, like some extinguished star that, after centuries, is briefly able to shine once more. Dante Bonuccelli: During my adolescence I used to go to the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires. It was very close to my house, so I could reach it by foot. It was a classic building with a beautiful high-ceilinged reading room and no windows; the only light came from a large skylight. Tall wooden bookcases covered the walls and were accessible via iron walkways. It was a solemn environment that called for introspection, with dark-toned materials and long wooden tables and lamps. And an overwhelming silence. The director back then was Jorge Luis Borges, whom I was lucky enough to meet. Besides his considerable talent as writer, he was a very well-read person endowed with extraordinary modesty. I have always been drawn to his writing style, his imagination, the minimalist and abstract nature of his narrative. He had already written the incredible short story “The Library of Babel”: The universe (also referred to by others as Library) is composed of an indefinite, and possibly infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with ample air shafts in the middle, rimmed by low balustrades. You can see the endless higher and lower floors from every hexagon. The distribution of objects in the galleries remains unchanged. Twenty-five extensive bookshelves, five on each https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-017



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side, cover all sides but one; their height doesn’t exceed by much that of a normal library and is the same on each floor. The unoccupied side looks at a narrow corridor leading to yet another gallery, identical to the first and to all the others. This refer to the quote from the Borges book the Library of Babel (referenced in the footer at page 222).

He had been working there for 15 years and told of how, as soon as he had been appointed director, the doctors had informed him he was becoming blind; what a twist of fate to be lucky enough to be granted access to a myriad of books and not being able to read them. At that time I used to endlessly read books on literature, archaeology, philosophy and psychology. Since I was 17, archaeology books made me want to travel to several South American countries in order to visit sites and museums of pre-Colombian culture, while psychology books encouraged me to enrol in a psychology course at university. Some years later, without much conviction, I started to attend courses at the architecture faculty of the same university; I recall this imposing brutalist and vaguely neo-Corbuserian building that had just been built on the banks of Rio de la Plata. The library was on the top floor and had a glazed facade, from which you could enjoy the view of the river disappearing into the horizon, like the sea. This modern environment in reinforced concrete was thus flooded with natural light. It was a vision of books and nature. I then randomly took out a book, Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture, about the Katsura Imperial Villa, with magnificent black and white photographs by Yasuhiro Ishimoto. I was extremely moved by this architecture, so pure, rigorous, timeless; it was the same emotion I would also feel by looking at Mies Van der Rohes’ endeavors. At that moment, in that library, I realized I wanted to be an architect. Many years later, in Milan, UniFor appointed me to design bookcases for libraries. Certainly, libraries have had a big influence in my life. CL: When you hear the terms book, library, and architecture, what design features come to mind? OJ: Put simply: everything revolves around the shelves. Whatever kind of envelope you choose to wrap them in, a library’s building blocks are even simpler than those of our DNA, a code consisting of four amino acids. The code of a library, on the other hand, comprises just three different elements: shelves, table, chair. Okay, perhaps lighting too, depending on the available natural light. If you study the architectural history of libraries since antiquity, you find the most magnificent examples of what you can do with these key elements. Certainly, architecture and design history offer up an inexhaustible supply of potential ways to orchestrate that magical moment in which worlds are formed from printed letters. DB: Different from other public buildings, libraries are still highly respected by people. Thanks to our curiosity we always try to obtain knowledge most relevant to us,

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Fig. 1: Dante Bonuccelli in its Milan studio. © by Morgan Orlandi

Fig. 2: Customized CF bookshelves in marble at Qatar National Library. © of UniFor photo by Mario Carrieri



Professor Claudia Lux asks six questions 

Fig. 3: Interior space at OODI Helsinki central library features CF bookshelves. © of UniFor photo by Mario Carrieri

Fig. 4: View over the library space at the library of the Musee d’Etnographie of Geneve. © of UniFor photo by Mario Carrieri

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from top to bottom: Oliver Jahn Editor-in-Chief AD Architectural Digest Germany © René Fietzek; Library of the Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum Osaka, Japan Photography by Tadao Ando; Étienne-Louis Boullée: Projekt for the National Library in Paris, France, 1785 © Étienne-Louis Boullée; Pierpont Morgan’s Library The Morgan Library & Museum New York City, USA Photography by Graham Haber, 2014; Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum Osaka, Japan Photography by Mitsuo Matsuoka;



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Reading Area Seashore Library Qinhuangdao, China Photography by Chen Hao / Vector Architects; Barocksaal Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen St. Galle, Switzerland © Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; Pierpont Morgan’s Library The Morgan Library & Museum New York City, USA Photography by Graham Haber, 2014; Barocksaal Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen St. Galle, Switzerland © Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum Osaka, Japan Photography by Tadao Ando

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and libraries are places for focusing but also for interchanging knowledge. Libraries with classic-style architecture have a very institutional external appearance, but the charm is all on the inside: from the wooden furniture to the dark, stately, mysterious atmosphere, it’s no coincidence that so much of literature and movies takes place in antique libraries. In contrast, libraries with contemporary architectures stand out for their distinctive appearance in the city landscape. On their insides though, they have large interchangeable, multifunctional spaces, with furniture settings allowing for a more informal attitude. Different from classic libraries, one generally notices more natural light and in some cases a wider color palette. Between the two periods there is a middle one, between the 50s and the 60s, featuring eminent examples of architecture, such as Louis Kahn’s library at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Gordon Bunshaft’s library at Yale University in New Haven. In the present day libraries are not just places for solitary reading activities; rather they are open spaces for communicating, not just relying on books in paper form but also equipped with IT equipment. CL: Librarians say we need a wow effect in our buildings. How would you define the wow effect? DB: Architects have a social responsibility. Public buildings need to be acknowledged as such; they need to become a reference point for communities. They need to interweave in the urban tapestry in order to become a cultural heritage, people need to look up at them with affection and pride. This is much harder to accomplish than by just a bold architectural feat, in line with contemporary iconic trends, where the ambition of “leaving a mark” sometimes penalises functionality, ergonomics, and ultimately maintenance. Modern architectures are prime examples of this emotional instinct that creates an unremitting quest for innovation and thrill. They are very good at capturing attention, not because they are more captivating on an emotional-sensory level, but because they divert the brain from its own laziness. Their goal is to get imprinted in your memory as a symbol, an icon; it’s not requested that we understand them, their aim is to make an impression more than signifying something. Architecture needs to embody its own specific historical circumstances while being devoid of trends and the desire to amaze at all costs. Building a new library is a considerable effort for the community, and it needs to be able to pass the test of time, and not just physically; we must not erect buildings that in time we get tired of watching or that are uncomfortably inhabitable. OJ: Much as I love architecture, the greatest wow effect in any library always comes from the stacked books themselves. Of course once they get to a certain size, libraries can no longer be purely open stack, and then the focus is more on the building itself and on the ways in which it orchestrates that perpetually monkish activity of silently, studiously contemplating a book. I’ve visited countless libraries around the world –



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research libraries, national libraries, even famous monastic libraries, not to mention numerous literary homes and important private libraries from the present day – it’s almost as though I collect such places too, drinking in their aura as I do. Enumerations can easily go on and on, but here’s a small selection of libraries I consider particularly beguiling, places whose impact and aura never fade. Among the most impressive I’ve seen are the abbey library of St. Gallen and the snow-white rococo splendor at Admont Abbey, the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, the Hertziana in Rome, the Bodmeriana in Geneva, Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm Public Library with its exceptionally elegant, Ledoux-inspired rotunda, Tadao Ando’s semi-subterranean Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum, whose gently curving floor-to-ceiling shelves feel like the apotheosis of the library stack, the legendary Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, housed in one of those Gilded Age palazzos, built by late nineteenth-century oil, steel, and banking magnates, in which a Gutenberg bible is almost de rigueur. Then there are the fantastically stocked private libraries such as Heribert Tenschert’s Bibermühle by Lake Constance, or Oskar Maria Ungers’ and Werner Oechslin’s libraries of architectural history in Cologne and Einsiedeln respectively. Max Dudler’s Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center in Berlin, whose airy reading room features tiered reading terraces, is one of the finest new build libraries of our day – an austerely drawn, contemporary interpretation of the library, in particular of Etienne Louis Boullée’s sadly unbuilt vision for the French national library. Reading rooms, atria, tables and chairs, shelving: whatever the functional requirements, these are the key elements that always play a part in library architecture, and will continue to do so even in the digital age. Our world may be increasingly digitized but, to my mind, this doesn’t mean that libraries, which, since the great library of Alexandria, have primarily been places of study and wonder as well as, of course, repositories for all human knowledge and culture, shouldn’t long continue to revolve around the physical, tangible, readily accessible book. Which takes us back to the library stack: Boullée’s vast vaulted reading room, with its high galleried stacks on either side, puts me in mind of my own fantasy library, never to be built of course (and perhaps rightly so). To recast the aforementioned Borges quotation, paradise as I’ve always imagined it would be a mixture of a monastery and Boullée’s reading room, with architecture by Dudler, Ando, Zumthor or Chipperfield – and all the space I could ever wish for. CL: How can digital knowledge in a library be expressed by design and architecture? If libraries are for people, how do architects need to rethink? DB: It will not be just digital knowledge that will change the way we design and plan. In the last 60 years the technological revolution has been greater than in all the rest of history; changes have been exponential and combinational, making it therefore impossible to predict the future as a simple extension of the present. It will necessarily be different; the reasoning has changed. Genetics, information technology, robotics, and A.I. will drastically revolutionize the very concept of humanity, an evolution

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intrinsically linked to the supremacy of technology, which is the primary power to be reckoned with in our times. The real danger is that in such a society advanced from a technological-scientific point of view, mankind loses those primordial, established certainties that for millennia have been universally shared. While technology is developing at an exponential rate and is redefining the way we work, live, and even think, the most pressing matters might well be different ones, because technological intrusion is not confined to economics or society, but also concerns our biology and our entire moral and values structure. Studies have confirmed that spending too much time on the Internet affects the brain, whereby digital stimuli make us more multitasking but conversely damage our attention span and focusing capability. As a matter of fact, an extensive use of the Internet can have an impact on many brain functions: for example, the constant stream of information “encourages” the so-called split attention, namely the ability to focus simultaneously on several stimuli. In turn, though, this behaviour can hinder our ability to maintain our focus on a single specific task. Nowadays we can make use of information and news without interruption, which seems to be altering the way our brain stores and even evaluates the content it is exposed to. Elon Musk is trying to connect the brain to neural networks and computers, so as to create an interface allowing for a perfect symbiosis between man and machine, through a microchip planted in our head and very thin wires connecting the cerebral system to hi-tech devices. The very next steps, already outlined in the horizon of innovation, could well be to strengthen the neurological skills of planted subjects, thus reaching some sort of symbiosis with Artificial Intelligence, and generating “super digital intelligences”. For example, it would be possible to have a super-memory able to perfectly remember large quantities of books. Part of the information we were previously able to obtain in libraries can now be found online, in an intangible form, but only the more popular less-specific variety. Knowledge becomes increasingly more commonplace, uniformed. All the rest disappears from the Web. Libraries will possibly be able to contain more selected and exclusive information in a more digitalized fashion. All of this prompts us to reflect that it is much more difficult nowadays to envisage the future, even the near one. Given the ongoing changes and mutations, we architects will have to rethink the spaces, interpreting this new reality that will be much more different. OJ: For starters, it’s not about pitting the physical library, and the physical book as we’ve known it for more than 500 years, against all the digital manifestations of today’s world, in some kind of traditionalist conservation struggle. On the contrary: it’s long since been apparent to dispassionate observers that these two worlds can successfully coexist in our day-to-day lives. Gerhard Lauer, Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Basel, recently presented a study on reading in the digital age that outlines, in a calm and entirely non-alarmist way, how the new dominance of computers and the Internet has by no means lessened the significance of reading as one of our key cultural practices. In fact, we are reading more than ever before,



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with the number of new publications rising year on year, while also spending large chunks of our days and nights browsing the usual digital platforms. This “also” may seem a given, but it is the crux of the matter – when planning library architecture, designers should bear studies such as Lauer’s in mind and create places that, instead of defending the book as the symbol of a lost age, celebrate its undiminished effectiveness as a vehicle for knowledge, source of joy, and fount of inspiration within a blended, analog, and digital information landscape. In 2019, Venice’s Museo Correr hosted a groundbreaking exhibition entitled Printing Revolution 1450–1500, that very intelligently used multimedia tools to present to a contemporary audience the blizzard of technological innovation around incunabula. After working with hundreds of European and American libraries over a period of many years, the University of Oxford’s 15cBOOKTRADE project was able to convey the economic and social impact the advent of printing had on early modern Europe in a way that was genuinely accessible and entertaining to all. Such exhibitions should be a regular feature at our libraries – technically, scenographically, and intellectually cutting edge but also keen to meet the entertainment needs of an audience that would have little time for a glass-cabinet display of faded parchments but that, with the right approach, can be persuaded to delve all the more enthusiastically into our cultural history. Every generation needs to establish its own new ways of visualizing and harnessing the knowledge, history, and culture of past eras. Explored via intelligently executed digital strategies, the past can provide a limitless supply of new inspiration. CL: If libraries are for people, how do architects need to rethink their perception of libraries? DB: Adolf Loos used to say: “The overall goal of architecture is to assemble an inhabitable and welcoming space”. Architectural spaces need to be interpreted as emotional and multi-sensory experiences, as a reaction of an individual to an environment eliciting continuous stimuli: the space has the ability to express immediate emotional reactions. The erected building will then influence our perceptions, our emotions, our ability of interaction. The spatial configurations of our environments can then elicit a sense of well-being or discomfort. I believe it is important to “feel comfortable”, to feel like wanting to go back there and to have stimuli that are necessarily contemporary, in an environment that doesn’t lose the “mystery” of the ancient libraries. An important feature enhancing this feeling of well-being would be to have views on a garden, or perhaps to be able to read in the open air, where possible. It has to have an appearance within the city, capable of leaving a recognizable trace of its important social purpose, while at the same time not being tied to ephemeral graphic symbols or aesthetic fashions. An appearance that is able to stand the test of time with dignity. OJ: As I’ve already hinted, making books as widely and openly accessible as possible is, to my mind, the key factor in any library. It’s like when you look something up in

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an encyclopedia (assuming it’s not Wikipedia): before you get to the entry you were originally interested in, your attention is snagged by five other terms and their stories. In the same way that detours can improve local knowledge, so global knowledge absorbed via random sidetracks is often no bad thing. This is how libraries should continue to be organized in the future – not as closed-stack knowledge silos that keep users at a remove from the object of their search, but as constantly reimagined openstack paradises from whose shelves they can pull books in passing and thus embark on highly fruitful digressions. Of course, with so much centuries-old knowledge assembled therein, libraries have always tended towards the awe-inspiring in their architecture, much in the same way pantheons used scale to make plain an individual’s position in the universe. The libraries of today (and tomorrow) need to continually examine and re-examine how they can best orchestrate encounters and interactions. A badly run cafeteria is not enough; what we need are areas that, in their quality of place, rival popular urban spaces: atria, outdoor areas, inviting oases of all kinds – not to mention well-designed, comfortable furniture for reading. CL: How important is design for a community place? Does it really have any influence on building communities? DB: In Europe cities have public squares and parks that are the primary locations for social gatherings. In the rest of the world, especially in those areas of fast urbanization almost always guided by financial speculation and the use of cars, people don’t have public spaces for gathering, and in some cases shopping centres sadly take on that role. Social isolation is responsible for poverty and violence. There are some interesting examples of multifunctional libraries operating 24/7, allowing for not just book referencing but also group activities like playing music, recording, 3D-printing, use of conference rooms, and small studios for dance or similar activities. A public building used with this purpose can help the community to enhance communication between people, thus encouraging social integration. OJ: Without a doubt. Design is and always will be able to create spaces where people can gather, though design alone can’t guarantee that a collection of highly divergent individuals will come together as a vibrant, communicative community. The better we engage with the needs of an ever more rapidly changing society, addressing those needs via the artistic design of spaces that enable communities to express themselves, the more vibrant such places will be. Who knows: perhaps libraries can, even in this century of hyper-nervous digitality, succeed in once again positioning themselves as places that affirm our sense of self; maybe then we might see Borges’ paradise take shape in our lifetimes.1

1 The Library of Babel – Fictions (1935–1944). Buenos Aires: SUR Publisher, 1944.

V Profiles of Authors

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Achim Bonte

Dante Bonuccelli

Stephan Schütz

Ines Miersch-Süß

Georg Gewers



Werner Frosch

Oliver Jahn



Profiles of Authors 

Claudia Lux

Max Dudler

Elif Tinaztepe

Marco Muscogiuri

Jette Cathrin Hopp

Lina Lahiri

Catherine Lau

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Achim Bonte Dr. Achim Bonte is Director General of the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB). Before moving to Saxony, he was Deputy Director of Heidelberg University Library. Bonte is, among other positions, a member of the Committee for Scientific Libraries and Information Systems of the German Research Foundation, of the IFLA National Committee Germany, and of the State Board of the Saxon Library Association. He is co-editor of the journals B.I.T online and Bibliothek: Forschung und Praxis. SLUB, founded in 1556, is one of the largest and most productive scientific libraries in Germany with a particularly broad task profile. It is the library of Technische Universität Dresden, the State Library of Saxony, and an important innovation and service center of the nationwide information infrastructure. The future development of the library is described in the strategy paper “SLUB 2025”. Image © SLUB / Ramona Ahlers-Bergner Dante Bonuccelli Dante Bonuccelli was born in 1956 in Buenos Aires, where he graduated in architecture in 1979. In 1984 he moved to Milan and began collaborating with various architecture firms, developing projects for buildings, exhibition designs, interiors, and industrial design. He has taught architectural composition at the Politecnico di Milano since 1996. In 1998 he founded Avenue Architects, an architecture and industrial design firm with projects in Italy, Asia, and America. IBM, Hoechst, Johnson Controls, Eni, Allianz, Ansaldo, the Vatican, Philips, Vodafone, Università Bocconi, Editoriale Domus, Davis, Schönbuch, Mobimex, Molteni&C, and Dada are some of his clients. The projects of Avenue Architects are widely published in books and magazines. He has been awarded numerous prizes for industrial design: Good Design Award 2008 and 2009, Compasso d’Oro Index 2004, 2005, 2009, and 2010, honorable mention 2011, Red Dot Design Award 2008 and 2009, Best of NeoCon 2009, Silver Award NeoCon 2007, EIMU-Premio Intelligent Space 2004, Interior Design’s Best of Year Awards 2007, and MD Magazine Best of 2011. Image © UniFor Max Dudler Max Dudler was born in Altenrhein in Switzerland and studied architecture at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main and at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. He is the founder and director of an architecture firm of the same name, which was founded in 1992 and has offices in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and Zurich. Over the course of its more than 25 years of existence, the office’s focus has expanded beyond classical architectural tasks. Throughout ever-changing contexts, Max Dudler has transferred his conceptual approach to urban planning, traffic engineering, conversions, monument conservation tasks, and exhibitions, right through to furniture design. With around 100 employees from over 10 countries, he implements international projects, including sites in Russia, Belgium, and Switzerland. His architecture follows the fundamental laws of proportion, measure and material. It is an architecture that seeks to build a harmonious whole with simple geometric forms and sees itself as part of a universal ensemble. His work has received the International Architecture Award in Stone 2015 for the high-rise ensemble Hagenholzstraße in Zurich, the Hugo-Häring Landespreis 2015 of the BDA BadenWürttemberg for the Visitor Centre Heidelberg Castle, the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany 2012 for work on Hambach Castle, and the Nike for the best urbanistic interpretation 2010 for the Jacoband-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum. In 2004 Max Dudler was appointed professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Image © Pascal Rohé

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689501-018



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Werner Frosch Werner Frosch is Partner at Henning Larsen Architects and Managing Director of their Munich office. As project director, he works on large and complex projects for private and public clients. In addition to his daily tasks, Werner Frosch engages in numerous lectures and as a member of the jury for the imparting of architecture and quality in the physical environment. He is chairman of Deutscher Werkbund Bayern. Henning Larsen is an international architecture firm with Scandinavian roots. The studio was founded in Copenhagen in 1959 and today employs over 300 architects and specialists in seven offices worldwide. The office in Munich has existed since 2011 and in addition to office and administrative buildings, educational and research facilities, cultural buildings and interior design projects, it also offers high-class residential construction. Image © Henning Larsen Georg Gewers Georg Gewers was born in Westphalia and studied architecture at RWTH Aachen, TU Stuttgart, and Ecolé d’Architecture Belleville Paris between 1983 and 1990. Previously, he had embarked on an education as sculptor and stonemason in the studio of his father and artist Bernhard Gewers between 1976 and 1980. He finished his diploma in 1990 with the Swiss professor Walter M. Förderer at TU Stuttgart. After his studies he joined the London office of Norman Foster (Foster associates) for two years between 1990 and 1991 and worked from there on the first German projects of Foster Associates FA in Duisburg with their innovative glazed facades. In 1992 he started his first own firm, BGKK architects, later GKK architects in Berlin, with some initially acknowledged projects. In 2008 the office Gewers Pudewill was founded with Henry Pudewill as a partnership that developed into an international brand that works with a fresh, innovative, and contextual approach for different clients and challenges. Georg Gewers with his partner Henry Pudewill belong to the group of successful German architects Gewers Pudewill, who are known beyond the borders of Germany. Their portfolio is pronounced through its variety, but is always individual and unique, with the buildings and designs of exceptional quality. Their work includes numerous competition prizes, awards, publications, and book releases. The search for new challenges and an experimental nature represents their spirit. Image © Udo Hesse Jette Cathrin Hopp Born in 1971 and growing up multilingual with Norwegian, German, and Danish, Jette Cathrin Hopp is a graduate architect and has been working with Snøhetta since 2005. She is director and part of the management group, with responsibility for acquisition and new projects. Jette has extensive experience in complex Norwegian and international projects, leading major international project developments and competitions. She regularly lectures at architectural symposia, conferences, and international institutions, sharing Snøhetta´s philosophy and design ideas, and she is also a jury member for several architecture competitions and prizes. Jette is also regularly invited as a critic to international architecture universities. Examples of her experience are her role as team leader for the museum in the King Abdul Aziz Center for Knowledge and Culture, Dharhan in Saudi Arabia, and in the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, as well as the project leader for a large-scale hotel and resort development of Hvar in Croatia. She has led major international developments with a focus on sustainability: Astana Expo 2017, “Future Energy”, Kazakhstan; Lingkong Soho Shanghai, China; Elbtower in Hamburg, Germany; and in Norway innovative environmental projects such as Powerhouse One in Trondheim and Powerhouse Kjørbo concept phase in Sandvika, which is the world’s first rehabilitated energy-positive building. Image © Pepe Lange

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Oliver Jahn Oliver Jahn is editor-in-chief of AD Architectural Digest Germany. As a journalistic style authority on the international design, interior, and architecture scene, the Oliver Jahn brand is tailor-made: the bibliophile  – who owns more than 15,000 books  – studied language and literature as well as phi­ losophy in Kiel. Oliver Jahn initially worked at Suhrkamp Verlag in Frankfurt and for the art magazine Monopol before starting at AD in 2006, initially as head of architecture and design, then as deputy editor-in-chief. In July 2011, Oliver Jahn rose to the position of editor-in-chief. Image © René Fietzek Lina Lahiri Lina Lahiri graduated with the highest distinction from Oxford Brookes University and received her Diploma in Architecture from The Bartlett, University College London in 2005. She joined Sauerbruch Hutton in 2005. As project manager, she was responsible for the planning and implementation of a large number of international competitions and projects. A focus of her work is the Scandinavian regions and the design and planning of high-rise buildings. Lina became partner at Sauerbruch Hutton in 2020. Sauerbruch Hutton is a Berlin-based architectural practice with projects throughout Europe and Latin America. The studio with currently 100 employees was founded by Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch in 1989. Their ability to combine architecture, urbanism, and design with a culturally informed outlook on sustainability has been internationally recognized. Its integrated design approach aims for an architecture that combines ecological performance with intuition and sensuality. Among Sauerbruch Hutton’s award-winning projects are the GSW Headquarters in Berlin, the Federal Environment Agency in Dessau, the Brandhorst Museum in Munich as well as the Immanuel Church in Cologne. Their M9 Museum of the 20th Century in Venice Mestre was opened to the public in December 2018. Sauerbruch Hutton is currently building much anticipated high-rise buildings in Stockholm and Berlin. Image © Tania Kelley Catherine Lau Catherine Lau is the Assistant Chief Executive of the Public Library Group of NLB (National Library Board), a role she has held since April 2015. She oversees operation of 26 public libraries, planning and development of new libraries, as well as content and programming to promote Readers for Life – the vision of NLB. Prior to her present posting in NLB, Catherine was the Director of the Strategic Planning Division at the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) from June 2010. Among other aspects of work, she also oversaw policies in library and learning. While at MCI, Catherine worked closely with NLB in developing the Library of the Future Master Plan, which was approved in 2015. Her current focus is to lead the NLB team to implement this Master Plan and the National Reading Movement from 2015 to 2021. Catherine believes that public libraries must transform themselves to keep up with the fast changes in the information landscape. Despite the prevalence of free information on the Internet, public libraries can continue to be an endearing institution, providing greater value-added services and more customized information to the public. Her vision is embedded in the implementation of the Library of the Future Master Plan, which has seen six libraries revamped thus far between 2017 and 2018. Each library has seen tremendous increases in usage and customer satisfaction. Image © Catherine Lau



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Claudia Lux Professor Dr. Claudia Lux ist Honorarprofessorin am Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Für fünf Jahre war sie die Projektleiterin der Nationalbibliothek Katars bei der Qatar Foundation und arbeitete dort eng mit Sheikha Mozah (Chairperson) und Sheikha Hind (Vice Chairperson und CEO) sowie Rem Koolhaas und seinem Büro OMA zusammen. Zuvor war sie Generaldirektorin der Stiftung Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin sowie Direktorin der Senatsbibliothek Berlin. Des Weiteren wurde sie zur Präsidentin der Internationalen Vereinigung bibliothekarischer Verbände und Einrichtungen (IFLA) gewählt und hatte von 2007 bis 2009 als dritte Deutsche dieses Amt inne. Sie ist Sozialwissenschaftlerin und promovierte im Fach Sinologie. Sie arbeitete in der Ostasienabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin und war in mehreren Forschungsprojekten tätig. Image © MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION Marco Muscogiuri Marco Muscogiuri is an architect and Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Milan (Dep ABC), where he teaches at the School of Building Engineering and Architecture. With Alterstudio Partners Srl, of which he is a founding member and consultant, he has carried out projects for public and private clients and participated in competitions, receiving awards, focusing in particular on designing public spaces and places of culture. He is the author of many publications on the subjects of cultural building, architectural design, and architectural drawing (www.alterstudiopartners.com). Among his main projects are the European Library of Information and Culture of Milan (with Bolles + Wilson); projects, consultancies, feasibility studies, guidelines, and functional programs for dozens of libraries and cultural centers throughout Italy. These include MedaTeca di Meda (MB), finalist for the 2012 Gold Medal for Italian Architecture; the Libraries of Melzo (MI), of Pergine Valsugana, and of Comano Terme (TN); the University library of Pavia; the project of the Game and Toy Museum of Rome; the redevelopment of the urban center of Castenaso (BO); and several residential buildings. Image © Marco Muscogiuri Ines Miersch-Süß Ines Miersch-Süß is a German architect. She obtained her engineering degree in 1993 after studying architecture at the Technical University of Dresden and at the Ecolé d’Architecture Nanterre-La Défense in Paris, and was a scholarship holder of the Centre International des Etudiants et Stagiaires and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura di Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. She founded her first office in 1997 and established herself as a specialist for museum architecture with more than 100 project developments for the major museum landscapes in Germany. In 2015, she relaunched her architectural practice and founded the MSAO MIERSCH SUESS ARCHITECTURAL OFFICES in partnership with Holger Süß as an internationally focused practice for a market adjustment of the wide range of expertise from airport building to small-scale cultural building. MSAO is a German-international design, engineering, and innovation studio for architecture, urban development, and engineering structures for innovative architecture on all scales to create value for the twenty-first century. As owner and Creative Director of her Dresden-based studio, she inspires today an interdisciplinary team of people from various design disciplines up to and including engineering experts, driven by the need for super-modern architecture, an experimental curiosity, and a keen understanding of innovation. In addition to her daily architectural practise, she is managing the MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION as engineering engagement for urgent future topics. She is also owner of the Art Corporates Brand Management Agency. Image © Lars Neumann

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 Profiles of Authors

Stephan Schütz Born in 1966 in Duisburg, Germany, Schütz studied architecture at TU Braunschweig, from where he graduated in 1994. Since then he has been working at the office of von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), and since 2006 has been doing so as a partner. He is the head of the gmp offices in Berlin, Beijing, and Shenzhen. Among his most renowned projects are the New Weimar Hall in Weimar, the New Tempodrom in Berlin, the Christian Church in Beijing, the CYTS Plaza in Beijing, the Grand Theaters in Qingdao and Tianjin, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Universiade Sports Center in Shenzhen, and the conversion and refurbishment of the Kulturpalast in Dresden. Since 2009, Schütz has regularly been leading workshops at the aac (the Academy for Architectural Culture), of which he is a co-initiator. Image © Katrin Strempel Elif Tinaztepe Elif Tinaztepe brought years of international experience working in London and Los Angeles to Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects in 2005. She applies her distinctive design sense to cultural, civic, and higher education projects, while also leading the firm’s library specialist work, a typology for which the company is best known. Her thoughtful, analytical approach to design, coupled with her passion for client collaboration and the transformative power of architecture, has led to a timeless body of work that spans continents and character. Elif has a unique ability to untangle the most complex of projects to successfully facilitate dialogue with clients, users, and other stakeholders, whether on ongoing projects or in international workshops. The result is a wake of buildings that are multilayered in functionality yet easy to approach, rich in detail while appearing effortless. Elif is a regular lecturer and workshop facilitator at international conferences globally. With more than 30 years of experience, Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects is one of Scandinavia’s most recognized and award-winning architectural practices. Working out of studios located in Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Shanghai, we provide skilled architectural services all over the world, with a distinguished track record as designers of international high-profile architecture. We are deeply committed to the Nordic architectural traditions based on democracy, welfare, aesthetics, light, sustainability, and social responsibility. Image © Schmidt Hammer Lassen

VI Special Thanks

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together is success.” Henry Ford

This book would not have come about without collaboration with many supporters and cooperations. I would like to express my special thanks to each and every one, listed here: UNIFOR, in particular Carlo Molteni, Alessandro Bonuccelli, Ute Denk Network for Architecture Exchange NAX, for partnership on the 1st International Library Summit AIB Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, for partnership on the 1st International Library Summit NOMOS Glashütte, Award Foundation for the Innovation Building Award Fondazione Querini Stampalia for hosting the 1st International Library Summit Qatar Foundation for the opportunity to preview the Qatar National Library SLUB for hosting our first preparatory podium to the 1st International Library Summit DNB for hosting our second preparatory podium to the 1st International Library Summit Rem Koolhaas & Vincent Kersten from OMA for supporting the preparatory podiums Jette Cathrin Hopp for her participation as curator of the 1st International Library Summit Oliver Jahn for his participation as Special Guest of the 1st International Library Summit Patricia Süß for her cooperation at the 1st International Library Summit and on this book I would like to thank all the authors and their many helpers for their trust, their time and their commitment to making this joint book possible.