China presents future library (Photo)

This particular library, designed in collaboration with the Urban Design and Planning Institute in Tianjin (TUPDI), has been established around a giant sphere that has an indoor audience.

On this huge sphere, shelves of books that resemble a topographic map have been placed on top of the ceiling.

“The internal part of the Tianjin Binhai Library looks like a cave, which has endless book shelves”, explains Winny Maas, cofounder of MVRDV.

Rafts serve in addition to keeping books, with their rolling structure serving as ladders and chairs, enabling people to take full advantage of space.

Maas describes this structure as “a urban waiting room”.

Book cases are very appropriate to sit down and at the same time enable access to other floors. The angles and turns have been accomplished to stimulate various uses of space, such as reading, walking, meetings and talks”, Maas points out.

Our first question after seeing this design was, how will books be obtained that are on shelves near the ceiling?

Unfortunately, it was resolved that the upper shelves are aluminum plates. This was not the original goal of the MVRDV designers.

The original plan was to reach the upper floors through several rooms located behind them. But during the construction phase, this element was removed.

This building was built for three years and although the top is not userable, the library holds 1.2 million books.