Now THIS is cool

23Dec07

This is the new Royal Library in Copenhagen.  It includes a bookshop, cafe, restaurant, clutch of research centers, archives, a roof terrace, and the Queen’s Hall, which provides seating for 600 in a venue that works for concerts, stage performances, and conferences.  It’s 7 storeys encased in black granite, with the light-filled atrium in the middle designed to look like a diamond floating on the water.

Those Danes, I tell you.  Good job guys!  There is nothing I love better than a structure that is both visually appealing and functional.  Maybe it’s just growing up in the Midwest, but it seems like very little effort is put into making buildings look good.  If it’s a public building, like a library, it seems as though people assume: “they’ll come regardless, stuff is free here, let’s just do this as cheaply as possible.

The church that my parents went to was another prime example of putting saving money before saving any sense of aesthetic.  The original structure was a cute, brick, church-looking building with the peak, and the stained glass.  The addition, was a long rectangle with mustard colored corrugated siding.  That was the side of the building that faced the road, and blocked most of the pretty part of the church from being seen easily.  Great job guys, that’s something to take pride in.

Of course, some may take umbridge with the fact that the library houses more than just the library itself.  People within the library community still get worked up about libraries becoming more like bookstores i.e. having cafes, and comfy chairs.  To them I say: you are idiots.  As a perpetual student, as well as a writer of sorts, I want to be able to go to the library and spend a whole day there. I want to sit in a chair that doesn’t make my ass go numb, and sustain myself with coffee and/or sandwiches.  Just because librarian is an ancient profession doesn’t mean we have to become relics of the past.

Similar to the guy who thinks libraries shouldn’t have computers, are the people who think libraries should only have books and I don’t even know what else, a table perhaps, is that okay?  If libraries didn’t reject that notion, we wouldn’t have Farenheit 451, which was written on a library typewriter that Ray Bradbury rented for $.10 a day.  There will always be the few librarians whose attitude is “read it and get out”, but mine is “come into this beautiful and functional structure, and stay as long as you need to (or until closing time).”  Maybe I should move to Denmark. 

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, change or die, libraries   |  2 Comments
Tags: architecture, Denmark, library structure