Worlds Coolest Library

[roadman65]

Check this one out.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/worlds-coolest-library-opens-china-breathtaking/

[Bruce]

Those higher bookshelves are completely inaccessible and are only eyecandy. Give me a room full of shelves and nooks anyday.

Reminds me a bit of Seattle's Central Library, designed by a star-chitect and is functionally the worst library I've encountered. The metal finishes and open space make it very loud when trying to walk around, it's overcrowded because there's too much open air, and trying to get from floor to floor requires walking through a maze that only goes up...going down requires using the overburdened elevators or emergency stairs.

[kkt]

They have forgotten that the library is not the building.  The library is inside the building.

Aluminum plates that look like books?  really?

[Roadgeekteen]

And how the fuck do you reach the top shelf?

[hotdogPi]

And how the fuck do you reach the top shelf?

After a certain height, they use fake books, not real books.

[Roadgeekteen]

And how the fuck do you reach the top shelf?

After a certain height, they use fake books, not real books.

So the point of it is to look cool?

[english si]

You can do functional libraries with awesome architecture and grand reading rooms - off the top of my head the Library of Congress, New York Central Library and the Bodleian Library are well known for it, and I'm sure there's others.

However, all these are old in style: the floor has lots of tables to actually read the books and make notes. The shelves go high up, but there's walkways to reach the higher ones (and sometimes those rolling ladders as well, but never having to go too high up). Of course, the reading room isn't the whole library (and they have those clinical other rooms and densely packed shelf piles with the moving shelves so they don't have to have gaps between them all).

The issue is modern architecture is usually minimalist. Thus tables and chairs in a grand open space are off theme. Ladders and walkways and stuff ditto.

The new British Library somewhat pulls it off - modernist architecture but still functional (though not functional enough that they don't let you in without a specific reason to be there as it can't deal with plebs coming in), but when people think of the British Library they think of the large Victorian reading room on the old site.

[US 89]

The Salt Lake City Library is pretty cool, especially from an architecture point of view.