Library Architecture

Library design has always answered two questions at once: where do the books go, and where do the readers sit. For centuries the books won. Shelving set the plan, and the reader was given a table near a window because the window was the light source.

Modern libraries answer differently. Stacks move to compact storage or off site, the floor plate opens up, and the interesting decisions become social ones: how to keep a children’s area and a silent study room in the same building, how to make an entrance that a stranger will walk through, how to let a passer-by see activity from the street. Glass, terraces, stepped interiors and generous stairs are not decoration; they are attempts to make a public building feel like it is addressed to you.

Read Why Modern Libraries Look Nothing Like Old Libraries for the full argument. Libraries of the World visits individual buildings, and The Modern Library explains the programme those buildings have to house.

We name buildings only in terms that are widely established, and we mark anything we cannot verify rather than filling the gap with a plausible date.