Níall McLaughlin Architects   United Kingdom   A work of the London practice of Niall McLaughlin, the new library in the historical setting of Cambridge University has for 2022 won the Stirling Prize, awarded by Royal Institute od British Architects (RIBA). The ensemble of simple brick volumes re

Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos   Spain   The library is conceived as a gate of access to the Jardines de la Agricultura (Agriculture Gardens), which it joins and becomes part of. In order to adapt to the historic layout of the 18th century gardens and to respect the existing trees, the buil

Adjaye Associates   United States   The new museum is located in the heart of historic city of Princeton University and will go up on the current site of the museum. The design is conceived as a “campus within the campus,” containing, aside from the exhibition area, Marquand Library, o

Adjaye Associates   South Africa   Located in Riviera, a Johannesburg suburb, the new library is to be a space for learning, investigation, and cultural exchange from the perspective of the African continent. Apart from the usual library program – including reading rooms and archives

Adjaye Associates   United States   In the placid city of Winter Park, near Orlando, Martin Luther King, Jr. Park welcomes this civil and cultural center. As part of an extensive revitalization of the park, the new hub is in harmony with the unique tropical ecology of the site, and is

Tadao Ando   Japan   After a long and fruitful career, Tadao Ando decided that it was time for him to make an altruistic contribution to Osaka, the city where he was raised and developed as an architect. Ando wanted to pay tribute to the children of Osaka, the next gener

Tadao Ando   Japan   Ueno Park, a gift from the Imperial family to the city of Tokyo, is a large public space where several cultural institutions are located. One of them, the old Imperial Library, was transformed into a library for children. The old building has a pseud

Vector architects   China   The building was carefully oriented in such a way that the entire complex would reconcile the two realities underlying the particular spatial character of the city of Ningbo, where the sea, ever imperturbable, faces the bustle of the community...

Snøhetta   China   The Beijing Sub-Center Library celebrates a public space for learning, information exchange, and discussion. It aims to set the benchmark for future library design in many aspects – from building and enclosure technology, social and environmental sus

BN Asociados Arquitectos    Spain   Led by Silvia Babsky Nadel and Ramón Valls Navascués, Madrid-based BN Asociados Arquitectos won the competition to build the Central Library and Municipal Archive of Leganés, a city within the Madrid metropolitan area. Construction was at an advanced

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   The new library building goes up at the center of the market square, characterizing the transitional space and adapting its facades to the environment. The hexagonal floor plan makes for free-flowing, spacious rooms...

MAD Architects   China   This seamless-looking white structure molded in concrete contains a sinuous library and a block of mixed amenities – cafés, public restrooms, a nursery room, among others – for the citizens of Haikou, capital of Hainan, China’s southernmost province.

Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei   Germany   The annex sought not only to accommodate new programs but also to improve a complicated urban situation characterized by loosely related buildings and a heavily used street. A new underground parking garage forms an entrance square that connects the

Foster + Partners   United Arab Emirates   Close to the airport, 10 kilometers from the center of Sharjah, stands this two-floor building by the British firm Foster + Partners. Overhangs 15 meters wide shade the facades against the sun, and aluminum lattices varying in density filter solar ra

Mecanoo   China   The new library will rise by Tap Seac Square in the historical center of Macau, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its grid facade recalls the exterior of the building that stands on the site, the former Hotel Estoril. Where the main entrance is, the skin

Mecanoo MAYU architects   Taiwan   The 37,000-square-meter building for Taiwan’s oldest city presents an inverted stepped shape designed by Mecanoo, the Dutch firm headed by Francine Houben, in collaboration with the local office Mayu Architects. Held up by quartets of slender white c

Steven Holl   United States   On the banks of the East River, a branch of the Queens Public Library addresses a call for community space in an almost exclusively residential neighborhood. The building, low and compact, takes up little ground, and makes the much used riverside par

Open Architecture   China   The firm headed by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, Open Architecture, working from offices in New York and Beijing, has designed a campus for the Qingpu Pinghe International School in Shanghai, which has students aged 4 through 18. One of the buildings, the

gmp Architekten   China   In the Chinese province of Jiangsu, in the eastern part of the country, Changzhou is a 2,500 year old city with a dense network of rivers that is becoming the new industrial and technological hub in the prosperous Yangtze River delta area. There in C

Kengo Kuma   Norway   The curved building, devoted to Henrik Ibsen, is located on the edges of the park, with which it establishes a relationshop through large windows and several accesses. The typical Norwegain wood tile roof tilts towards the park and rises towards the

Snøhetta   United States   The Norwegian firm Snøhetta has won the competition for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which is to go up in Medora, North Dakota, on the banks of the Little Missouri River. Selected out of 40 entries, including the proposals of co-final

MAD Architects   China   The building, included in the Haikou Bay rejuvenation plan, will house a new public space. The continuous white concrete structure lets natural light pass through holes and conceals the installations, creating visual consistency...

Antonio Montes Gil   Spain   In the town of Molins de Rei, in Barcelona, the new El Molí Library – previous Biblioteca Pau Vila – is located in the old industrial warehouse of Ferrer y Mora, a textile factory built in 1858, also known as ‘fábrica del molí’ because of its locatio

The Guardian   Rosie Goldsmith   The Future Library, a project dreamed up by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, was opened to the public in Oslo. After eight years, manuscripts penned by some of the world’s most famous living authors were delivered to “The silent room” on the top f

‘This will kill that.’ In Victor Hugo’s prophecy – which was also McLuhan’s – ‘this’ referred to books and ‘that’ to cathedrals. It was a process of creative destruction that lasted as long as it took digitalization to arrive, and with it a new proph

A barn in the German municipality of Kressbronn, near Lake Constance, has been turned by Thomas and Christine Steimle into a library and community center. In deference to the building’s history, the project balances past and present. The renovation i

The New York Times   Michael Kimmelman   The Hunters Point Community Library is one of the finest public buildings New York has produced this century. But it cost more than $40 million, took a decade and almost died.  Against a phalanx of mostly dreary new apartment towers, the soon-to-open

Massimo Listri (Florence, 1953) began his career as a photographer when he was just 17 years old, collaborating with numerous publications dedicated to art and architecture, his two other great passions. He founded the mythical magazine FMR with Fran

Libraries have been one of the symbols of bourgeois society. Originally confined to monasterios and palaces, distant havens of elitist knowledge, libraries eventually became quintessential public spaces in the capitalist and increasingly democratic c

According to the hyperurban Koolhaas, the future of humanity is in the countryside. Not so with the present. Which is why he continues to work in places that can hardly be called rural: the poleis of Europe, the megacities of China, or the kingdoms o

In the port city of Tianjin (population 15.47 million), the Dutch firm MVRDV recently completed an immense library with a huge inner eye that can be glimpsed from the street and which, being so spectacularly disturbing, reminds one of the eye of Suar

A cornerstone laying ceremony was recently held at the site of the new National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, designed by the Swiss partnership Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with the Tel Aviv firm Mann Shinar. The building stands on a slo

The firm Herzog & de Meuron was selected to build Israel’s new National Library in Jerusalem, wrapping up a process that began with the selection of the proposal submitted by USbased Israeli Rafi Segal, which authorship issues eventually prevented fr

El proyecto del israelí Rafi Segal es el ganador del concurso para la nueva sede de la Biblioteca Nacional de Israel en Jerusalén, que ha sido organizado por dicha institución y la Fundación Rothschild, desarrollándose en varias fases y contando con

Bajo una gran pirámide acristalada, una montaña de libros invita a la lectura en una estructura de terrazas apiladas: así es el nuevo edificio de MVRDV para la biblioteca pública de la ciudad de Spijkenisse, a unos 20 kilómetros de Rotterdam. Con una

Gorka Blas ha ganado el concurso internacional para la construcción de una biblioteca pública en la ciudad surcoreana de Daego. Su propuesta —que resultó la vencedora entre las 548 presentadas por equipos de 61 países— se inspira en el carácter del

Diébédo Francis Kéré está construyendo una biblioteca pública en la aldea burkinesa de Gando, en la que el arquitecto afincado en Berlín nació hace 47 años: un nuevo edificio que se añade a los dos —aulario y residencia de profesores— que componen la

La recientemente inaugurada Biblioteca Municipal María Lejárraga, situada en la localidad de Ogíjares y diseñada por el estudio granadino M57 —liderado por el tinerfeño Rubens Cortés—, se levanta sobre una antiguo secadero de tabaco declarado Bien de

Richard Ingersoll   La creciente digitalización de los libros supone un reto para las bibliotecas que, lejos de desaparecer, mantienen su carácter simbólico y adoptan formas evanescentes e inéditas.

Annick Cojean   Considerado el mejor especialista en la historia del libro, Darnton apuesta por las nuevas tecnologías para llevar hoy a término el ideal ilustrado del saber abierto y universal.

María Luisa López-Vidriero   Existe un mundo que los nuevos soportes digitales no podrán reemplazar: el vinculado a las huellas materiales, las sensaciones táctiles y los hábitos asociados a los libros.

Werner Oechslin   ¿Cuál es el origen de la arquitectura? ¿Sigue siendo verosímil la narración de Vitruvio sobre aquella época primitiva en la que los hombres vivían aún como los animales (ut ferae), merodeando por bosques y cuevas? La leyenda vitruviana sobre el orige

Luis Fernández-Galiano   If a book is a machine for thinking, then libraries are thought factories. The tools of these intelectual industries, however, are undergoing a complete transformation in these days, and the digital book triggers the contemporary transition of librar

Un libro y un edificio no son sólo instrumentos de comunicación sino objetos cuya materia construye nuestro entorno físico. Esta idea, tan actual en un tiempo en que la red amenaza el futuro de los medios impresos, ha sido el desencadenante para la p

La biblioteca de la Universidad de Arte Musashino, en Tokio, es la última obra de Sou Fujimoto. Con una superficie de 6.500 metros cuadrados, el edificio alberga un total de 200.000 libros. La estructura está formada por estanterías que van de suelo

La centenaria Universidad de Deusto, cuya sede central se encuentra a orillas de la ría de Bilbao, enfrente del Museo Guggenheim, ha inaugurado su nueva Biblioteca y Centro de Recursos para el Aprendizaje y la Investigación, un edificio de diez plant

Stuart A. P. Murray   Madrid  2014  
La Esfera de los Libros   - 394 Pages