beyond the sea
The Library
Remember when I dragged you into Munich’s public library? You were kind of cranky about it; “it’s just a place filled with books,” you said. “Precisely,” I said. I went in anyway, I thought I would be stepping into the Enlightenment, globes and maps galore,revolving staircases crawling up to the highest of ceilings, a glow of dusty light. It was quite bland and institutional, tiled floors and disgruntled librarians in tweed. I walked out bored, I guess you were right. It was nowhere like these places (my new favourite site to rest my eyes).
The Library used to be a word you would capitalize. It was important. It held the Truths. And then we discovered there was no God, there was no truth but many (so if there are many truths how does that make any of them true? A debate I won’t delve into in this particular entry at this ridiculous hour…) And then what became of them? La Bibliotheque Nationale is a success, because I think it understands the new purpose of the library. It is a cultural meeting point of different perspectives. It is a place you are welcome to question, to dream, to be completely and utterly alone with your intellect. Oh, how I love the library.
I was reading the architectural magazines I plucked out of a garage sale, I was just reading on the evolution of the library, how it has lost its ability to “speak” as a unified civic monument, it no longer has any archival function as, like I said above, we are growing to understand that history is objective, that there there are multiple perspectives on everything. Yet the library is still important to me. As is the museum. As is Parliament. Why? Because, perhaps I am alone on this one, I still hope to be part of a greater collective - a greater meaning. I still want to believe in the symbolism of spaces, and I don’t mean that it must commemorate an older order of things. It celebrates our progression, whatever that may be.
Rem Koolhaas has said, “The last function of architecture will be to create symbolic spaces responding to the persistent envy of the collectivity.” So I suppose I’m not alone on that one.
