eBook - ePub
Contemporary Library Architecture
A Planning and Design Guide
Ken Worpole
This is a test
Buch teilen
- 216 Seiten
- English
- ePUB (handyfreundlich)
- Ăber iOS und Android verfĂŒgbar
eBook - ePub
Contemporary Library Architecture
A Planning and Design Guide
Ken Worpole
Angaben zum Buch
Buchvorschau
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Quellenangaben
Ăber dieses Buch
Focusing on the practical issues which need to be addressed by anyone involved in library design, here Ken Worpole offers his renowned expertise to architects, planners, library professionals, students, local government officers and members interested in creating and sustaining successful library buildings and services. Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide features:
- a brief history of library architecture
- an account of some of the most distinctive new library designs of the 20th & 21st centuries
- an outline of the process for developing a successful brief and establishing a project management team
- a delineation of the commissioning process
- practical advice on how to deal with vital elements such as public accessibility, stock-holding, ICT, back office functions, children's services, co-location with other services such as learning centres and tourist & information services an sustainability
- in depth case studies from around the world, including public and academic libraries from the UK, Europe and the US
- full colour illustrations throughout, showing technical details and photographs.
This book is the ultimate guide for anyone approaching library design.
HĂ€ufig gestellte Fragen
Wie kann ich mein Abo kĂŒndigen?
Gehe einfach zum Kontobereich in den Einstellungen und klicke auf âAbo kĂŒndigenâ â ganz einfach. Nachdem du gekĂŒndigt hast, bleibt deine Mitgliedschaft fĂŒr den verbleibenden Abozeitraum, den du bereits bezahlt hast, aktiv. Mehr Informationen hier.
(Wie) Kann ich BĂŒcher herunterladen?
Derzeit stehen all unsere auf MobilgerĂ€te reagierenden ePub-BĂŒcher zum Download ĂŒber die App zur VerfĂŒgung. Die meisten unserer PDFs stehen ebenfalls zum Download bereit; wir arbeiten daran, auch die ĂŒbrigen PDFs zum Download anzubieten, bei denen dies aktuell noch nicht möglich ist. Weitere Informationen hier.
Welcher Unterschied besteht bei den Preisen zwischen den AboplÀnen?
Mit beiden AboplÀnen erhÀltst du vollen Zugang zur Bibliothek und allen Funktionen von Perlego. Die einzigen Unterschiede bestehen im Preis und dem Abozeitraum: Mit dem Jahresabo sparst du auf 12 Monate gerechnet im Vergleich zum Monatsabo rund 30 %.
Was ist Perlego?
Wir sind ein Online-Abodienst fĂŒr LehrbĂŒcher, bei dem du fĂŒr weniger als den Preis eines einzelnen Buches pro Monat Zugang zu einer ganzen Online-Bibliothek erhĂ€ltst. Mit ĂŒber 1 Million BĂŒchern zu ĂŒber 1.000 verschiedenen Themen haben wir bestimmt alles, was du brauchst! Weitere Informationen hier.
UnterstĂŒtzt Perlego Text-zu-Sprache?
Achte auf das Symbol zum Vorlesen in deinem nÀchsten Buch, um zu sehen, ob du es dir auch anhören kannst. Bei diesem Tool wird dir Text laut vorgelesen, wobei der Text beim Vorlesen auch grafisch hervorgehoben wird. Du kannst das Vorlesen jederzeit anhalten, beschleunigen und verlangsamen. Weitere Informationen hier.
Ist Contemporary Library Architecture als Online-PDF/ePub verfĂŒgbar?
Ja, du hast Zugang zu Contemporary Library Architecture von Ken Worpole im PDF- und/oder ePub-Format sowie zu anderen beliebten BĂŒchern aus Architecture & Architecture General. Aus unserem Katalog stehen dir ĂŒber 1Â Million BĂŒcher zur VerfĂŒgung.
Information
PART 1 The library in the city
DOI: 10.4324/9780203584033-1
CHAPTER 1 A city with a great library is a great city
DOI: 10.4324/9780203584033-2
The public library building is enjoying a new era of prestige across the world, with considerable architectural innovation during the past twenty years. Today, however, libraries are as much about creating places where people meet, read, discuss and explore ideas, as they are about the collection and administration of books in an ordered form. The idea of the modern public library as a âliving room in the cityâ is becoming a vital feature of modern urban culture, and architects are having to respond to this change of role. Towards the end of this chapter a schema is proposed which compares and contrasts the distinctive attributes of the traditional public library and the modern public library architectural paradigms. Such changes necessitate a major shift in the way these new building projects are developed and commissioned, and these highly political procurement and development processes are discussed.
Against expectations, the public library building is enjoying a new era of prestige across the world. So too are many other forms of library design and architecture, as higher education expands to meet a global demand for better educated populations capable of attending to their own intellectual self-development and professional expertise. No modern town or city is truly complete without a confident central library functioning as a meeting place and intellectual heart of civic life, echoing the sentiment of the inscription above the door of the grand reading room of the modern Nashville Library which opened in the summer of 2001: âA city with a great library is a great city.â
The core functions of these new libraries are not simply more of the same (and bigger and bolder) â they are different in very many ways from what has gone before. As architect and critic Brian Edwards has observed, âLibraries have seen more change in the past twenty years than at any time in the past hundredâ (Edwards, 2009: xiii). Edwards is one of an admirable group of contemporary library historians, architectural critics and practitioners, whose advocacy of the new library movement has been especially helpful in the writing of this book, along with Alistair Black, Kaye Bagshaw, Biddy Fisher, Shannon Mattern, Ayub Khan, Simon Pepper and Romero Santi. I also learned much from the study into new library buildings conducted at Sheffield University by Jared Bryson, Bob Usherwood and Richard Proctor. Many other researchers and writers are acknowledged at the end. Likewise the bibliography will, I hope, provide some idea of the scale and range of writing now available which regards the library building as central to the improved life chances and well-being of people in modern democratic societies.
In a special edition of the journal Architectural Review, devoted to âThe Library and the Cityâ, architectural critic Trevor Boddy (2006) expressed some scepticism about the so-called âBilbao Effectâ, which suggested that only iconic museums designed by world-famous architects could rescue failing cities from oblivion. He noted that, âIt seems evident that the building that will come to emblematise the beginning of a new century of public architecture is not the latest Kunsthalle by Hadid, Holl or Herzog & de Meuron, but rather Rem Koolhaasâ Seattle Central Public Library.â In this I concur, noting that in several of the most audacious designs for new world-status museums there is actually nowhere for people to sit or engage with each other. Who are these buildings really being designed for, and what is the nature of civic entitlement and democratic exchange embodied within them? Such questions are now being asked around the world as a generation of âiconicâ cultural buildings struggle to find revenue funding and audiences. For a devastating critique of the baleful influence and final implosion of the âBilbao Effectâ, few can better Deyan Sudjicâs acerbic essay on âThe Uses of Cultureâ in his book The Edifice Complex (2006), where Sudjic itemises the overblown rhetoric and spiralling costs of many of these grand self-referential museum projects, and their early demise or slow foundering.
The reason why libraries still have a clear civic edge over the proliferation of art galleries and museums of recent years â in the name of urban regeneration â is because they continue to provide a much richer range of public spaces than these other forms of cultural provision, public or private. It was Seattle Libraryâs âtrailblazing take on public spaceâ that excited Boddy. He enthused that its âlevels provide niches for scholars, corporate researchers, bibliomanes, teen-daters and even the homeless seeking refuge from the rainâ (Boddy, 2006: 45). This universal welcome and reach he stated, were âshared by most of the libraries gathered in these pages.â Economic historian Edward Glaeser urges all those involved in future urban regeneration programmes to invest in people, and in projects such as public libraries which encourage learning, participation and the development of social capital, not grands projets providing consumer spectacle for those lucky enough to have time and money to spare (Glaeser, 2011).
Seattle Public Library
Now probably the most famous newly designed and completed public library in the world, Seattleâs Public Library opened on 23 May 2004. Designed by Rem Koolhaas and his Dutch firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), along with LMN Architects in Seattle, its gigantic, deconstructed irregular mass now dominates one area of the city, and has clearly been designed to express the shock of the new, whilst simultaneously challenging every accepted clichĂ© of what a public library should look like. It is said that Koolhaas refuses to accept architectural concepts such as âtypeâ and âgeneric styleâ, and believes that architecture should be based on a research-based approach to the design process that takes nothing as given but always starts with a tabula rasa. In his own words, the library is âa physical expression of the struggle to maintain the sanctity of public space and build an efficient, technological machine in a world that is in a constant state of fluxâ (Mattern, 2007: 75).
The buildingâs strikingly unconventional shape â basically a series of five boxes (one below ground) stacked irregularly on top of each other, producing a set of cantilevered overhangs as well as deep insets â is said to make it more resistant to wind and earthquakes, reinforced by an exoskeleton of diamond-patterned steel mesh. Seattle journalist Regina Hackett aptly suggests that âthe building has a split personality. All the brutal chic is on the outside, its diamondshaped steel and glass skin stretched over muscle ⊠Inside, the library appears to change its character, starting with the assymetrical steel skin, which internally is painted a luscious and lulling baby blue.â The deeply indented or extended edges on all four sides produced a range of lighting conditions inside which offer both shade and direct sunlight, all mediated by the steel mesh skin.
The internal spaces are located across eleven different levels, with the first five levels given over to childrenâs and teen library areas, auditoria, language centre, fiction, living room, cafĂ© and meeting rooms, with the âmixing chamberâ, described by one writer as a âtrading floor for informationâ taking up most of level 5. Above that the famous Books Spiral works its way up through levels 6, 7, 8 and 9 â where the main non-fiction stock is to be found in one continuous thread of shelving following an internal ramp which slopes continuously upwards at an angle of two degrees. At level 10 there is a large reading room with views out across the city, and, finally, level 11 is wholly allocated to administration. This schema or division of space is based on the programme being divided into five main compartments: Administration, Books, Meeting, Information and Parking. Those using the reading room to study, browsing for non-fiction, and thus likely to stay longer will need to rise further up the building. Those coming to attend language classes, to borrow a novel, or accompany children, or meet friends will find most of their needs met closer to the ground. Each floor is connected to the next by escalators as well as elevators.
To European eyes the building appears to become its own biosphere, almost entirely separate from the street or any kind of meaningful public landscape or street culture. It is its own world. But this is...