below: Comparison of the trading floor and centric type in terms of expansion. The flexibility attained in modern libraries comes from disconnecting information from the architectural container. (drawn by Neeraj Bhatia)
Symbolic Public Form
Continued segregation created a labyrinthine library hidden from public view; expandability became a primary design criterion. As the classical orders that often accompanied centric libraries were now considered static, thus librarians and modernists ran with the belief that a new flexibility of subject must be accompanied by a diversification of style. What resulted was a library with a generic floor plate that allowed change. Library programs were then ‘zoned’ into this neutral backdrop and wrapped by diverse containers that were free from the burden of storing information. Zoning the floor-plate reduced the hierarchy between library elements, creating a more egalitarian space, corresponding to an eventual emphasis placed on libraries as ‘democratic agents’ during the Cold War. However, the flexible ‘trading-floor’ library first appeared during the 1920s and 30s: Alvar Aalto’s library at Viipuri of 1927 was one of the first modern movement libraries. 11 This library was organised through interconnecting spaces contained within a single volume. Casual reading rooms could be transformed into other programs while remaining both secluded and linked. While no one space was grand, smaller rooms were synthesised into a larger gesture. Although growth and flexibility were possible once information was liberated from the architectural container, this came at the cost of a reduced symbolic presence of the library in the city. Ultimately, the modern library has lost its ability to “speak” as a unified civic monument as its function requires plurality: Increasing specialisation and a rejection of the imperial narrative led to a more fragmented and organic architecture. The domed, circular reading room implies a knowable world, centered, finite and complete, viewed from a single privileged point. With Modernism and Post-Modernism that confidence broke down. Hans Scharoun’s free-flowing Berlin library, begun in 1967, was a reaction to Prussian and Nazi stolidity, and to the symmetrical perfection of earlier libraries; his is a new world view of books as liberating, not containing, of text opening up new perspectives. 12 As information becomes increasingly non-spatially bound, perhaps the primary role of the contemporary library is no longer archival, but rather a return to a symbolic space of our dwindling collective values.
The last function of architecture will be to create symbolic spaces responding to the persistent envy of the collectivity. –Rem Koolhaas 13 Adolf Loos’ attack on subjective ornament expressed in Ornament und Verbrechen (1908) questioned the nature of a ‘public’ building. For Loos, buildings needed to have an expressionless, neutral exterior to cater to all individuals. Within these neutral public façades, he designed expressive private interiors for each client. This separation of expression and neutrality could be the key to a new library typology. The centric and trading-floor typologies are the clearest in their motives; while the centric creates a strong symbol, the trading-floor acknowledges growth by disconnecting architecture and information. By hybridising these two types, one is left with a container that protects and contains symbolic form. While the architecture of the container must take a neutral (public) stance, within this neutrality, informational elements (i.e. book stacks, data servers, etc.) of strong symbolic form are placed. By separating, without compromising, symbolic form from architecture, architecture is able to stand as the neutral container of collective values while the symbolic form(s) proudly speak for our distinction. This duality is in fact the basic definition of human plurality. ~
10
On Site review 20: archives and museums
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator