>>7993007
I live right next to that library. It's an absolute piece of shit. This is just the upper part of it, most of the space in that building is empt/not being used. You have to run a marathon to get from one section to the other. It's always full because around 70% of the space isn't being used.

Also soulless globohomo architecture. Hires actual retards for work (to be inclusive), absolutely unlikeable employees, not even free wifi (you have to pay for membership FOR FREE FUCKING WIFI).

For those interested, it's the library of Stuttgart - Germany

>>7993756
It's def Stuttgart's least beautiful famous building

>>7993787
Yeah the old one was very comfy. Shame

I wish more libraries kept the classic wooden architecture. To me it invokes tradition and the passing of knowledge. It's a shame really.

>>7993816
Public libraries need to be practical first and foremost. Their aim isn't to look pretty and invoke a sense of something but to hold books and it's a shame to say that old wooden furnitures isn't always the best (plenty of terrible metal ones naturally). Frankly, "artistic visions" of libraries are usually the most hard to use stupid things, case in point this Dr No architecture >>7993007 , furniture can be just as bad of a problem. The primary goal shouldn't be to design a pretty but functional space. Ironically, when architects designed plan for the new library in my city, there was no bookshelves visible on the pictures! Most of the stuff that is shared is kid's stuff and polar/romance for old people anyway. The idea of the library has a place to pass knowledge unfortunately, is far from the reality, not that it shouldn't strive to be, but the public is mostly kids, families looking for family stuff and old people.

>>7995534
>Public libraries need to be practical first and foremost. Their aim isn't to look pretty and invoke a sense of something but to hold books
Fucking souless Communist way of looking at the world. Beauty has a practicality of its own. People need beauty.

>>7996049
People need beauty, but a library need to be functional for its public "first". Practical is beautiful too. Architects who never go or use a library have no place designing one. That's how we got an impractical elevated oven of a room which was a headache for old and wheeled people in my local library, this and tables which were perfectly at children's head height.

You don't want most of nowadays architects "beauty" takes as well.

What you advocate for is picture of unused libraries, not libraries.

>>7997645
Libraries used to be beautiful and functional, but constructing such things is more expensive, and the Marxist-inspired schools of architecture that modern designers adhere to is designed to crush the human spirit.

You can have both, it just costs more to build and maintain, but it is worth it. Collective use buildings are to represent a collective human spirit, a symbol of the people and their aspirations that inspire while being used.

>>7998036
How is this supposed to crush human spirit?

But yeah, hate marxism, love collective, take meds.

>>7998191
yeah that one is fine. It is shit like this - >>7993007

>>7999999

>>7996049
Hello, based department?

>>7998982
Getting to the top books must be awkward. Also I am unsure the pressure being placed there is great.

Theres a particular one I got on here years ago that was a drawn bank of windows with a loads of cats, books, and plants. Does anyone happen to have it?

>>7998985

>>8001592
and this is why you don't buy bookcases from Ikea.

>>8001592
This reminds me of the fact that the huge library building at the college I go to is sinking a little bit every year (and unevenly, one side more than the other, which could cause a huge fracture in the coming years) because the engineers and architects forgot to calculate the strain on the building from the collective weight of all the books. They literally built a huge, multi story, multi million dollar library and forgot to ask themselves about the collective metric tons of weight that the books would add to the building when all the shelves were filled.

>>8004880
A very common (and very fun) urban legend.

>>8009776

>>8009777

>>8010650

>>8003398
You'd need a 50 ft ladder to reach half those books. Design is definitely aesthetic but not very practical at all.

>33 MB
https://files.catbox.moe/yx3etw.jpg

Guys, I have nothing to add, but please, don't let the thread disappear

>20 MB
https://files.catbox.moe/znx10b.jpg

>>8020150
stupid.

>>8023527
Do you have something against Bradbury's novel, or are you just reacting to the words out of context?

This thread reminds me of the Simpsons episode in which Marge is reading a magazine entitled "Better Homes Than Yours".

>>7993007
Wright, maybe the most respected american architect, spent most of his career pursuing function and using detail to highlight the innate beauty of functions form. Something that's been chased since the roman baths before him. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with wanting public funds to make something functional. The fact you call it a communist idea is kinda sad.

suppose there is a lot of libraries in the world with tall balconies and/or shelves so high they require a ladder. now suppose a certain percentage of books handled by someone have been dropped and fell a great distance. now suppose a certain percentage of people have fallen when close to a balcony or on a ladder. what would those percentages be? are there any recorded instances of this happening? or maybe there are works of literature that reference a falling book or person inside a tall library? what would it be like to be the book on the furthest edge of a shelf overlooking the great hall of a tall library? what would that feel like?

>>8024042
Uffff i love this idea. What would it feel like to be a book on a tall library? What would it feel like to be a cat laying on the edge of a building? What would it feel like to be a bird sitting on your nest? Or a snail looking upwards to the long journey ahead of you? Perhaps an old vinyl on the shelf of a store, having so much to say, waiting for someone to listen.

>>7993816
I hate that I have the brainworms to recognize that this is a Skyrim screenshot

>>7995999
I recognize this one, from the House on The Rock in the US

>>8007416
seems like a poor location to have books, what humidity and the seasonal flooding

For me, this is comfy.

>>8024987
Venezia was a major Renaissance printing, editing and publishing place though. There's still century old libraries here.

>>8004875
While true, those are not Ikea

>>8025446

>>8025163
That doesn't answer anon's question, it's still a horrible place to storage books

>>8024989
Extremely so

I'm not entirely sure whether this one is on topic, but it seems appropriate.

>>7995534
>Most of the stuff that is shared is kid's stuff and polar/romance for old people anyway. The idea of the library has a place to pass knowledge unfortunately, is far from the reality, not that it shouldn't strive to be, but the public is mostly kids, families looking for family stuff and old people
I'm in a lot of libraries in Canada, and that isn't the case here. Neighbourhood libraries are much mor elike this, but big downtown libraries are not at all.

>>7993007
Awful.

>>7996009
name?

>>8032746
In terms of what's in the rows or what's taken out by users? My point is overly simplistic certainly, regardless, in my city, neighbourhood libraries are about 2/3 of the loans and having worked in them, it's mostly teens, kids/families and elder people. Even the students often don't use the books (there's the uni library for that) but the space.
Anyway, fiction is overwhelmingly preferred to docs, and in fiction, it was mostly bd/manga then crime fiction then "classical" literature. That whole "passing of knowledge" is lovely and certainly nothing to sneer at, but it's really not what the library is for the majority of its users. Accessible cultural entertainment is still the main reason people go to the public library, and it's already a great thing. Having parents reading and taking books for their kids is fantastic. Giving kids the desire and the means to read is important.
Proper enduring, practical wood furniture is really not what is easily available nowadays as well...

>>8032753
Use reverse image.
It's Admont Abbey's library in Austria.

>>8029577
underrated post

>>7996010
Need a study like this

>>8029577
holy shit lol

>>7998036
anon I hate to break it to you but marxism has very little to do with the modern min-max approach to buildings

most of our briefs these days are for the same series of box buildings with simplified hvac, reconfigurable wall and ceiling layouts because it is the cheapest design to build for our developers and the quickest to build for our contractors
means spend less for more rent in return

ironically one of the most ambitious designs I've ever collabed on was with a trade union (the site was lost to another developer)

>>7995995
Thomas Jefferson's library at Monticello?

>>8008823
this is the only time i have ever wished 4chan supported emoji. i would use the puke face

>>8044083

Yeah, I'm a librarian. I work in a traditionally beautiful library, which is great. But when we had a mold issue and our HVAC failed, it was a nightmare to repair, and we had to go with uglier and more modern replacements and upgrades because it's all we could afford to do. Beautiful layouts and real wood and all that other shit are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, because capitalism rewards minmax design and materials. Fund your libraries better and we can afford to look nicer! None of us want to work in boring boxes but we need to spend money on books and not opening up plaster every time there's an HVAC issue.

But sure, something something Marxism.

>>8046264
Disgusting

>>8009777
>no one is illegal
>communist flags
disgusting

>>8045770
>>8045772
kill yourself or go back to your own thread goontard

>>8029577
heh

>>7993003 (OP)

>>8061676
reckon they have enough globes?

>>7993816

easier to catch fire, and we all know what a fire did to the library of Alexandria

bumpy

>>8046264
Looks like a great place to crush an awakening mind.

>>8008823
this looks like it's from one of my porn games

>>8026230
anon didn't ask a question, retard

>>8063208
Yeah anon, Berkeley is notoriously good at "crushing awakening minds".

>>7995534
>equating modern artistic aesthetics to older or classical ones to make a fallacious argument
Arts and humanities types are the worst.

>>8044083
>anon I hate to break it to you but marxism has very little to do with the modern min-max approach to buildings
Guess again. Ever heard of Bauhaus?
>>8053440
>Beautiful layouts and real wood and all that other shit
This is definitely somebody who wishes libraries were classier.
>capitalism rewards minmax design and materials.
Public libraries don't have shareholders but go off mask slip etc.

>>8067054
Public libraries are paid for by tax payers and i have never seen anyone says "i want to pay more taxes so our libraries look nicer":

>>8067106
if peoples tax money actually routinely went to useful and thoroughly deserving services like public libraries more often and in an actually meaningful way then people probably wouldn't mind quite so much, but instead we all know our tax money is now routinely getting pissed up the wall on providing stuff that we don't particularly like/want such as giving our political and media class access to a champagne lifestyle at our expense, while also giving unlimited free everything to illegal economic migrants who shouldn't even be in the country, as well as paying to make sure the establishment can endlessly put its legitimate political opponents through the legal system in a series of highly questionable cases in an effort to silence them and/or make them go away forever...

>>7993475
i dream of living somewhere this beautiful, maybe one day i'll build a home with a library this cozy in it

>>7995534
>need to be practical first and foremost
Nothing NEEDS to be practical first and foremost unless it's some ad-hoc military fortification.
Design should lift up the soul.

>>8071123
Unless it is art it needs to be functional first. That doesn't mean it cannot be pretty, but that is a consideration that must not interfere with the function.

>>8071123
>Design should lift up the soul.
Yeah sure that silly anti-materialistic ethereal idealistic reasoning is how we get crap libraries in the first place, with zero reasoning about the actual function of a library. If people can't find stuff, can't organise their books, can't move around, there's no soul lifting going on or whatever.
I sure hope you aren't an architect.

>>7996049
>Communist
Capitalist, actually.

>>7993756
interesting. I live near Stuttgart too. Haven't been inside though

>>7996009
damn

>>8077925
Would love that place for an office (would probably need help keeping it in shape though)

>>7996049
agreed

>7074x4721
https://files.catbox.moe/kbpj4b.jpg

>>8019184
This place felt way, way bigger irl

The screen you're looking at now has likely displayed more pages than all the books combined in any of these images.

>>7996049
>Communist way of looking at the world
Most of the architecture perceived as "soulless" came from capitalist countries.
Pic related is Lenin Library (now Russian State Library) in Moscow, built during communist times.

>>8084064
Why did they change the name of the library?

>>8085704
Maybe because Russia is no longer communist?

I fucking HATE you fucking NIGGERS that defend modern architecture. You're all full of shit. Those anons defending beauty and traditional libraries -- thank you. It is good to know that there are still sane people in this world.

I normally just lurk, but the amount of utter modernist brainrot in the thread really set me off.

It's first-year architecture student wannabes like yourselves that completely and utterly lack the aesthetic, intellectual, and humanistic depth to comprehend the basic elementary notion that it is NOT that "Form Follows Function" or even that "Function Follows Form", but rather "Form IS Function".

A good library must lift up the human spirit; it must stir the enigmatic sense in Man; it must connect him to the long and storied tradition of our noble race going back thousands upon thousands of years and make him cognizant of his role in its continuation; it is a space for the mind as well as the body, and it must serve to showcase the majesty and dignity and soulfulness of the literary and civilizational project of the past 5000 years.

To do that it MUST be beautiful; it MUST be enigmatic; it MUST be traditional. Modernist shitty concrete boxes do none of that, and whether it's 0.001% more economically efficient (in either a capitalist or communist system) to make them is so far beyond the point that all of you showcase your total lack of intellectual or moral hygiene in whining about it.

Beauty has a function all of its own and it cannot be ignored, you fucking niggers. Jesus Christ. Is this really what we've come to? People defending slop-pop books in slop-pop boxes over the traditional beauty that even the most ignorant and untutored of children can recognize in an old library? Are you all fucking braindead?

Libraries are spaces for books. For learning. For Truth and Beauty. Not for fucking corposlop -- what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

>>8088491
lol fag

>>8088491
Can you explain what you mean by 'enigmatic' and how something can be both enigmatic and traditional?

>>8082728
Probably, yeah.
It's still much less glamorous and beautiful than those.
>>8088491
Stop LARPing.

>>8088491
Go ride a dildo or something, larper.

>>8088844
This.

>>8012826
this might surprise you but libraries have ladders for just this purpose

>>8088844
>>8089818
>>8089844
>>8089866
>>8088978


Yes, you are *all* wrong.

>>7993756

kek absolutely roasted that library

Montricher, Switzerland. Absolutely gorgeous.

>>8090782

>>8090783

>>8090784

>>8090782
That's nice but fuck putting back books on these shelves with these tiny spaces to manoeuver. It must be alright as a user, as a librarian though...

>>8088844
>>8089818
>>8089844
>>8089866
>>8088978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmness%2C_commodity%2C_and_delight

>Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas
>Stability, Utility, Beauty

You stupid fuckers don't even understand the elementary principles of architecture. You can all rot in your post-post-modern avante-garde contemporary bullshit, but it will not change the fact that you are all still wrong.

If a library is not well-built, it is worthless. If it is not useful in its purpose of storing books, then it is worthless. And if it is not beautiful, then it is worthless.

Period.

Faggots.

>>8053440
>e it's all we could afford to do. Beautiful layouts and real wood and all that other shit are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, because capitalism rewards minmax design and materials

Capitalism rewards thrift, vision, and endowment trusts.

Which a public library should have--oh wait, in the last century the endowments were plundered by local Marxist thieves who substituted taxes and smear their champion, Dewey.

>>8091991
Literal brain damage

>>7996009
This is where you go to after dying and a sexy goddess reincarnates you into a fantasy world

>>8009778
ok this is stunning.

>>8088491
I just think people who say there was nothing left to do with architecture since 1650 are really stupid. Brutalism is bad don't get me wrong but its meant for nuclear war scenarios. So even from that perspective Brutalism has its place.

There is also a problem with obsessing on beauty. Look at Pacific Palisades, the entire thing was built on very silly materials, just a bunch of woods and everything is nearly 100% flammable. Its all art homes. Now they will all be replaced and probably just be architected the same way because beauty > all.

If I have valuable books mixed with spaces for community meetings and teaching, the space needs to sacrifice beauty for long term durability. I think there should still be room for beauty though. That is why we still need architects to innovate, to try to see what they can achieve to mix durability and beauty.

>>8088491
Explosively based anon obliterating the repulsive corposlop subpeople infesting these virtual lands that are ours by right.

>>8088491
Child. You should spend more time in any library, regardless of the style of edifice.

>>7995534
>Public libraries need to be practical first and foremost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

>>8088491
>>8090629
>>8091788
Take a deep breath, anon. This isn't an architecture thread. The building style can add to the experience but it's still tangential. I've been in some gorgeous old libraries and also ones that were just the back room of an old store set aside for the purpose. Both have their merits and comfiness, and different feels while still being libraries. It's the books that make a library, not where it's housed, and as long as the building does its job of safely housing the books then that's what it is. Having beauty is great and I encourage it, this isn't an argument against that, and I do agree that "boring box utilitarianism" is a bit too ubiquitous in modern building design, but I also get that that's more of a money thing. Just saying to pick which ones you prefer, like anyone else. I, myself, don't mind the variety of design and complexity. You clearly do.

I get that you probably read a book on these topics, or some blog articles, or watched a few videos and went "hey YEAH" and are now super stoked to start an argument about it to show off what you think you know, but you're going about it in the most asinine way and in a place you're the least likely to actually have an impact, so all you're doing is making yourself look like a stuck-up armchair-riding retard with no contextual or social awareness. Quit angrily R*ddit-spacing in a bookhouse thread on a shitposting site's dead board, and try doing this >>8098243 for a while.

>>7996001
dont ask where that library is, what its for and the contents of those books

>>7993003 (OP)

>>8107051

>>8107065
the "hanging library" in mexico city.

another monument to showy architecture that may or may not be the best setup for a library...

personally im a fan of the more "classical" or "functional" architectures but i get it, architecture is also about making a statement. but with these sorts of libraries i'm grabbing my books and leaving, in and out, never studying in the library itself.

those great big modern glass buildings with high ceilings and weird bars of light everywhere might look cool and sci-fi from the outside or on a quick walkthrough, but i find it hard to relax and focus when i'm sitting in a giant fishbowl

>>8107066
if you can hear someone's heels echoing off the wall 2 football fields away something is wrong.

this underground library at UIUC was cozy af.

>5474x3653
https://files.catbox.moe/k0djni.jpg

How slow is this board? This thread is over 2 years old now and still up