S,M,L,LX Book
"the ambition of this project is to rid architecture of responsibilities it can no longer sustain and to explore this new freedom aggressively ... architecture lost function will be the creation of the symbolic spaces that accommodates the persistent desire for collectivity"
Proposal for the Expo 1989.
Seine is seen by Koolhaas as boring...Only visible excitement: irregular palisade of "bad" sixties and seventies towers (social housing) that surrounds/encloses the site.
A colossal rectangle (250x300 m) completely isolated between river and railway. Only one restriction: a limit height of 35m give or take. There's a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine to connect with the park.
The program is a megalomaniac's dream. Five total different libraries for the entire postwar production of words and images. The program is 250,000m2 (13 x ZKM, 10 x Zeebrugge); 75% of it is storage.
"A long with conference centers, restaurants, offices, e.t.c.... it would accommodate five separate and autonomous institutions in which the complete production of words and images since 1945.. would be contained.. A cinematheque, a library for recent acquisitions, a reference library, a library of catalogues and a scientific research library"
The scheme is based on Technological scenarios developed with inventors, system analysts, writers, electronic companies.
In the podium, we put circulation.
On the podium, we drop five different forms... libraries. Some round, some square, some on sticks, some sinking.
The very big library is interpreted as a solid block of information or repository of all forms of memory - books, laser disks, microfiche, computers, databases.
The major public space are defined as absences of buildings, voids carved out of the information solid.
Since they are voids, individual libraries can be shaped strictly according to their own logic, independent of each other.
1 slab of Storage, 1 slab of Admin,Office, 1 slab of Circulation/elevators... laminate them together to form a single large block.
The horizontal slices through this block, mimics the program of the reading rooms. Therefore, it is said that the plan = the section.
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"imagine, a building consisting of regular and irregular spaces, where the most important parts of the building consists of an absence of building"
The regular here is the storage; the irregular, reading rooms, not designed, simply carved out.
The TGB is a cube.
It's a solid block of information with reading rooms, voids, excavated where efficient.
Dark in the centre... daylight in the perimeter.
Cube pierced by nine shafts of vertical movement. As long as a void surrounds one of the elevator square, it is accessible.
Forms have to be left out, not constructed.
A cube. All the "deduction" have been performed, the building as a residue of process of elimination.
The portraits of the libraries, the way they will never be seen as shapes, as objects.
Somehow, presence of the cube, seems only way to respond to the surrounding "neatness" of the new architectural landscape.
But can such a container still have a relationship with the city? Should it? Is it Important?
Make a reverse model: What is solid has melted, what is void floods as object in nothingness.
The first test for facade... simulating the impossible.
A plane, sometimes transparent, sometimes translucent, sometimes opaque; mysterious, revealing.
material - cloud sky at night, like an eclipse.
The Void Spaces:
.Pebbles: "sound and moving image library":
Lev -4: Auditoriums, viewing booths and cubicles for film, video, television and music.
Lev -3: Cinemas, conference rooms, booths.
Lev -2: Booths, cinemas, offices: entrance lobbies.
Lev -1: "Treasure Exhibition"
.Great Hall of Ascension:
Lev 00: A horizontal cut separating the lower four floors from the cube that hovers nine meters above.
The hall can receive 10,000 people, it's floor and ceiling are made of glass.
It is intersected by the glass cages of nine elevators, each rising to its respective destination.
On the elevator shafts, electronic billboards announces different libraries.
.Offices:
Lev 01: The north face of the building is an office zone for ad ministrative, libraries and complementary services, connected, where necessary, to the stacks or the major rooms.
Lev 02: Storage.
.Intersection:
.Recent Acquisition Library:
Lev 03: " two voids that cross - a horizontal reading zoom and an auditorium that slopes towards the river"
Lev 04: Audio, booths, plant, storage.
Lev 05: Audiovisual, Auditorium.
Lev 06: Video, booth storage.
Lev 07: Video, storage.
Lev 08: Storage.
.Spiral:
.Reference library;
Lev 09; " a continuos spiral that connects five floors of partly open storage and study booths.
Lev 10: Reading rooms, open storage, carrels, robotized storage, plant.
Lev 11: Reading rooms, storage.
Lev 12: Reading rooms, plant, storage.
Lev 13: Lounge, conference room, storage.
Lev 14: Storage.
.Shell:
.Catalogue Room:
Lev 15: "appearing on the exterior as an eye; it provides a panoramic views of Paris"
Lev 16: Catalogue room, storage.
.Loop:
.Research Library:
Lev 17: "a scientific interior where floors becomes walls become ceiling becomes walls - a Mobius strip that performs a loop - the - loop across the depth of the building."
Lev 18: Conference room, storage.
Lev 19: Reading room, storage.
Lev 20: cafe, lounge, storage.
Roof: Restaurant, gymnasium, garden, swimming pool.
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