With the future of the New York Public Library the subject of so much public contention, there could not be a better time for MoMA's new exhibition on Henri Labrouste, the 19th-century French architect who invented the modern library as we know it. His two great projects — he built little else — are a pair of touchstone Parisian libraries, the Bibliotheque St. Genevieve and the Bibliotheque Nationale, that remain landmarks for their inventive structure, functional planning, and edifying design.
As curator Barry Bergdoll notes, Labrouste (1801-1875) worked through a period of extraordinary political and technological transformation. His were the first truly public libraries on a grand scale; that status reflecting the shift in power dynamics in Republican France. (The Bibliotheque Nationale was actually first conceived as the Royal library.) Architectural historians know him best for his introduction of iron work, heretofore the province of industrial typologies, as a design element in works of grand public architecture. His application of new iron technology allowed him to create broad, limpid spaces that would not otherwise have been possible. Their detailing, as the drawings and models in the show demonstrate, was extraordinary.
Labrouste was a draftsman of exceptional — mindboggling, really — ability. Today, the large-scale beaux-arts drawings of the type presented in this show are a thing completely of the past. Labrouste used them to chart the future. A pivotal moment in his life came during his travels through Italy as a winner of the Prix de Rome. In 1824, while visiting the three temples of Paestum, he came to see architecture as a discipline in the grip of perpetual development. This was a dramatic challenge to conventional wisdom, which then posited Classical architecture as an ideal frozen in time.
This philosophy, of an architecture of great generosity that constantly pushes technological boundaries, is just the kind of thinking we need today, especially as we reinvent libraries for a future that is as exciting as it is uncertain.
-@marklamster
Comments [11]
And, to the degree that we throw valuable capital resources into constructing overwrought physical spaces instead of changing copyrights and improving broadband access such that almost any volume one could want could be borrowed electronically, architecture is in fact a problem.
Its not clear when (5 years? 10? 20?) but it will soon be the case that our present attachment to material methods of data transmission (books, LPs, CDs, DVDs, celluloid film, what have you) will be a memory for only those of a certain age, while the youngsters will view these trinkets as moth-eaten nostalgia at best, and at worst relics of a time of god-forsaken damage to the environment akin to cars with tailfins and 3,000sf ranch homes.
None of which is to say we should dispense with the beautiful libraries and books that are still with us, but to simply note they are dead as a form of mass consumption (as public libraries were expressly created to be) and that we'd better get on with a means of literary engagement that can compete with streaming netflix or we will have failed to prepare for the coming generation.
03.07.13
02:17
03.07.13
02:31
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20120720/still-here
-m
03.07.13
05:57
Another thing to think of: many libraries in the US where built during the 60s, a hit or miss time for architecture. Seems like much of their lasting success is due to quality of space.
03.07.13
06:47
03.07.13
06:49
03.07.13
08:50
The point here is to question the project of providing grand spaces for the collection of books vs. other ways we might choose to educate the masses of citizens who do not have the capacity or wherewithal to pursue a literary culture on their own.
And if we want to call a collection of publicly accessible internet browsers a library, ok, but that is, to my view, a different project, and one that should be, in fairness, presented with a new taxonomy. To my mind, its akin to a room full of phone booths in an age when people of all incomes carry cell phones - there may be value in it for some people, but what is the larger point?
And, yes, it IS a downer, and hell, its why I live in NYC. And, yes, despite having a couple thousand printed books in my own library, I find, if I'm honest, I now do almost all of my reading on a screen - don't you?
03.07.13
09:48
I believe the stat about 62% of people using libraries for internet. My local library is mostly poorer people using the computers to look for jobs, which scares away most of the other people who look down on them. Not saying i'm complaining--just an effect of bringing in computers.
03.07.13
10:00
You wrote, "This was a dramatic challenge to conventional wisdom, which then posited Classical architecture as an ideal frozen in time."
I've seen the same idea in other reviews of the show, so I'm guessing Barry said something like this in the show. Do you know the specifics? Are you specifically talking about that particular time in French architecture?
I know a lot about the later history of the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the philosophies of its American graduates. They were not interested in "an ideal frozen in time." Neither were earlier Classicists in the Baroque, Rococo and Mannerist periods, or amateur but important architects like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
I've also studied the architectural coding of Paris, which went through different phases. I'm interested in what made the Labrouste's time freeze.
Ste. Genevieve is a great building.
John
03.11.13
11:02
03.20.13
11:51
04.03.13
10:13