TRÈS GRANDE BIBLIOTHÈQUE, FRANCE, PARIS, 1989
A library that considers past and future forms of information
OMA received an honorable mention for Très Grande Bibliothèque, a competition to build a new national library in France. The program called for the creation of various smaller libraries contained in one building envelope; including libraries for moving images, recent acquisitions, reference, catalogues and scientific research. The immense amount of information to be stored within these spaces (books, films, digital databases) became the impetus for the overall concept design. The library is imagined as a solid block of information, a dense repository for the past, from which voids are carved to create public spaces – absence floating in memory.
The ambition of this project is to rid architecture of responsibilities it can no longer sustain and to explore this new freedom aggressively. It suggests that, liberated from its former obligations, architecture's last function will be the creation of the symbolic spaces that accommodate the persistent desire for collectivity.
At the moment when the electronics revolution seems about to melt all that is solid - to eliminate all necessity for concentration and physical embodiment - it seems absurd to imagine the ultimate library.
But that was exactly what the French government proposed when it organized a competition for the TGB in the summer of 1998: 250,000m2 on the east side of Paris on a site near the Periphérique, facing the Seine.
Along with conference centers, restaurants, offices, etc., it would consolidate five separate and autonomous institutions in which the complete production of words and images since 1945 - the Bibliothèque is as much cinema as library - would be contained: a cinemateque, a library of catalogues, and a scientific research library.
The scheme is based on technological scenarios developed with inventors, systems analysts, writers and electronics companies. They all anticipate the utopia of fully integrated information systems to materialize before the opening of the building: books, films, music, computers will be read on the same magic tablets. The future will not spell the end of the book but a period of new equalities.
The Very Big Library is interpreted as a solid block of information, a repository of all forms of memory - books, laser disks, microfiche, computers and databases. In this block, the major public spaces are defined as absences of building, voids carved out of the information solid. Floating in memory, they are multiple embryos, each with its own technological placenta.
The responsibility of library was on the edge of change. Information storage was on the revolution from solid to electronics. What form of library can serve this massive transformation? Or what is the new library type? Rem Koolhaas answered this question in 1989 through National Library of France project.
Library was interpreted as a solid block, a repository of all memory, including printed and non-printed materials. On the other hand, public space was defined as the void.
Because the individual libraries are defined as solid, they can be spaces strictly of their own logics and independent to each other, even free from classical obstacles, such as gravity.
The battery of 9 elevators liberated and randomized the different architecture components. They are the only connection for the interiors of each library.
Through the 9 elevators, the Great Hall leads to:
1. The Pebbles: The Sound and Moving Image Library
Spaces for film, tv, music – auditoria & booths – embedded in podium
2. The Cross: The Recent Acquisitions Library
Two voids that intersect: the reading room is horizontal, the audio and TV spaces form a continuous auditorium that slopes toward the river. At their intersection is the amphitheater. The walls are lined with transparent viewing booths.
3. The Spiral: The Reference Library
The Reference Library is a continuous spiral that connects, in three turns, five floors of partly open storage, carrels, study booths. Each intersection allows for thematic or spatial variation.
4. The Shell: The Catalogue Room
On the exterior appearing like a pebble, it connects the spiral to the loop and provides a panoramic view of Paris, itself catalogue.
5. The Loop: The Research Library
A scientific interior where floor becomes wall, becomes ceiling, becomes wall… Mobius-strip that performs a loop-the-loop in the catacombs of the building.
6. Top: On top, a restaurant, a gymnasium, a garden, a swimming pool.
All other floors contains various forms of storage. North face is offices, including administrative offices, personal services and other institutions.
