MVRDV and Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute (TUPDI) have completed Tianjin Binhai Library as part of a larger masterplan to provide a cultural district for the city. The 33,700m2 cultural centre featuring a luminous spherical auditorium and floor-to-ceiling cascading bookcases not only as an education centre, but also social space and connector from the park into the cultural district.
An oval opening punctured through the building is propped open by the Eye, a luminous sphere with an auditorium, which takes the main stage within the atrium and enlarges the perceived space within. Terraced bookshelves which echo the form of the sphere create an interior, topographical, landscape whose contours reach out and wrap around the façade. In this way, the stepped bookshelves within are represented on the outside, with each level doubling up as a louvre.
The futuristic library sits within a sheltered gallery, topped with cathedral-like vaulted arches, which winds its way throughout the scheme. MVRDV’s project is surrounded by four other cultural buildings designed by an international team of architects including Bernard Tschumi Architects, Bing Thom Architects
The five-level building also contains extensive educational facilities, arrayed along the edges of the interior and accessible through the main atrium space. The public program is supported by subterranean service spaces, book storage, and a large archive. From the ground floor, visitors can easily access reading areas for children and the elderly, the auditorium, the main entrance, terraced access to the floors above and connected to the cultural complex. The first and second floors consist primarily of reading rooms, books and lounge areas whilst the upper floors also include meeting rooms, offices, computer and audio rooms and two rooftop patios. Tianjin Library is part of German architects GMP’s 120,000m2 masterplan which aims to accentuate the characteristics of the surrounding districts. Through its design, the complex will become a junction point for the CBD, old town, residential districts, commercial areas and the government quarter; hoping to compensate for any missing programme in each. The library’s outer volume was given in the masterplan so the Eye and its surrounding semi-public area are an internal space, like an inverted icon, acting as a central point and folly in the building.
The library is MVRDV’s most rapid fast-track project to date. It took just three years from the first sketch to the opening. Due to the given completion date site excavation immediately followed the design phase. The tight construction schedule forced one essential part of the concept to be dropped: access to the upper bookshelves from rooms placed behind the atrium. This change was made locally and against MVRDV’s advice and rendered access to the upper shelves currently impossible. The full vision for the library may be realised in the future, but until then perforated aluminium plates printed to represent books on the upper shelves. Cleaning is done via ropes and movable scaffolding.
The project is MVRDV’s second completed design in Tianjin. TEDA Urban Fabric, completed in 2009, provided 280,000m2 of mixed high and low-rise housing and retail.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
He left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant but no less strange. He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. He might, he knew, for he was a member of the branch in Harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. But he had never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marble steps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. And then everyone, all the white people inside would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at him with pity. He would enter on another day, when he had read all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter any building in the world.
This week, CJH Archivists participated in #1Lib1Ref, a collaborative Wikipedia
project encouraging all information professionals around the country to edit one page, add at least one new link or citation, or start a brand new page to further the reach of their archival holdings.
Here’s a breakdown of the amazing CJH partner collections that are now immeasurably more accessible thanks to their efforts!:
Simmel was a sociologist and philosopher, born 1858 in Berlin. Included in his collection are transcripts of personal letters to Edmund Husserl (1905-1918) and transcripts of personal correspondence between Simmel and Rainer Maria Rilke (1898-1915). Of particular interest in this collection is a handwritten letter from Simmel to Gertrud Kantorowicz dated May 20, 1918, in which he discusses his disillusionment with World War I and the hope he sees in the future of a new intellectual youth movement in Germany.
The Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (GNYCSJ) was formed in 1971 by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, to address the need for an organization that would be devoted exclusively to the problems of Soviet Jewry. The GNYCSJ served as the coordinating body of Soviet Jewry activities for more than 85 constituent Jewish organizations and community groups through the New York metropolitan area, with the affiliates in the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish communities.
Freedom Sunday for Soviet Jews was the title of a national march and political rally that was held on December 6, 1987 in Washington, D.C. Posters from the rally have been digitized and are available online from the Archives of the American Soviet Jewry Movement held by AJHS.
Malcolm Hoenlein has been the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations since June 1986. He is the founding executive director of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
Dinah Shtettin was a chorus girl from an Orthodox Jewish family who married the actor Jacob P. Adler in 1887. Although their marriage was short-lived, the couple had a daughter–Celia Adler.
This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Celia Adler and Lazar Freed, including theatrical materials such as scripts, programs and sheet music, correspondence, newspaper clippings, assorted publications, and photographs of many of the members of the Adler family and their friends from the Yiddish theater. These materials reflect the wide scope of the Adler acting family and their immense influence on Yiddish theater, Broadway and motion pictures.
Ita Aber has been a New York artist, conservator, historian and curator for over three decades. Her works can be found in private and museum collections in the U.S. and Israel.
HIAS began over 130 years ago as an organization dedicated to provide relocation assistance to persecuted Jews around the world. The organization’s mission now includes administering assistance to refugees and immigrants of ALL backgrounds by reuniting families and offering resettlement services through cultural and governmental advocacy.
Archivists from AJHS and the Center for Jewish History, with generous funding from HIAS, are currently working on a 3-year archival processing project to organize and provide access to thousands of digital organizational photographs, HIAS’ paper Administrative files (1950s-2000s), and limited digital access to hundreds of HIAS client files.
Make the most of high ceilings by installing a book wall. They are a great way to display your new favourite reads as well as making sure that a book is never out of reach!
Just imagine for a minute, you’re walking through an old library, and you turn and see this wedged into the shelves. You step through, and find yourself in Bag End—your feet on the green grass, and a gentle spring breeze rolling past as you wander under the bright blue sky.
