Futuristic World of Modern Libraries: Chinese “Guardian of Wisdom“
A book has always been a carrier of wisdom, of tidings. Book pages preserve texts that are thousands of years old. Nowadays, a book changes its appearance but its mission is still the same. From generation to generation, it has passed the wisdom of those who have been able to make a story alive.
It is not just about the hundreds of items in a library catalogue. It is also a challenge for architects to add a luxurious design to libraries, the stalls of wisdom. This was managed e.g. in China, where a library has changed into a micro world of books.
Eye into the author’s soul: Tianjin Binhai Library in China
Tianjin Binhai Library has been built as a future challenge; it works with space in a new style and futuristic vision. It shifts the concept of library as a building to the concept of art artefact. Visitors find themselves on a “planet” ruled by books that elegantly stored crawl upwards. It was designed by a Dutch company MVRDV and it metaphorically resembles a great eye and the spherical staircase in the middle its iris. The library has 33 700 m2 and was opened in 2017.
Levitating books
Clear, minimalistic white dominates the interior: it’s not distracting, it is uniform and accentuates the content that embraces. The shelves often serve as stairs or seats. Not only the building, but also the number of volumes is magnificent – there is up to 1,200,000 books. The books are not stored in ordinary even shelves, but rather float in mid-air in air flow since this is what the wavy curves of shelves remind the most.
A great illusion “from floor to ceiling”
Is it possible that the architect was illusionist? Perhaps he was more a visionary who was able to use the space and create a masterpiece. There are imaginary books in a form of printed aluminium plates that make the back parts of the shelves.
Chinese motto “I do not touch a real book”
Young generation now reads books using apps rather than reading paper- or hard-bound books. However, this doesn’t prevent the books to be kept in a representative space. The means of communication changes, but a writer will still write lines for his hungry readers.
