University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Library towers and the vertical dimension of knowledge

Van Acker, Wouter; Uyttenhove, Pieter; Van Peteghem, Sylvia

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89733

Description

Title
Library towers and the vertical dimension of knowledge
Author(s)
  • Van Acker, Wouter
  • Uyttenhove, Pieter
  • Van Peteghem, Sylvia
Issue Date
2014
Keyword(s)
  • Spatial Metaphors
  • Library Towers
  • Knowledge Architecture
Abstract
Verticality, and related figures such as the tower, stack, or mountain, are commonly used as spatial metaphors to express the hierarchy that we apply to information and knowledge. But these metaphors that transform the vertical dimension of knowledge into words are also translated into library architecture. Different libraries include, or have been built in the form of, a tower. In these cases, verticality as a spatial metaphor is folded back onto the spatial and architectural field where it originated. Library towers transform verticality as a concept that conveys relations in knowledge into architectural language. The translation of verticality as a dimension of knowledge into architecture thus forms a strange double bind between space and knowledge. This article analyzes how libraries have expressed the vertical dimension of knowledge in their architecture and identifies different approaches that make the vertical dimension of knowledge architecturally present. The library of Ghent University (Belgium), by Henry van de Velde, includes a storehouse of books that has been completely accommodated in a tower. The architecture of the French National Library, by Dominique Perrault, plays with the metaphor of the tower in a semantic manner. Other libraries, such as the “Book Mountain” by MVRDV in Spijkenisse, exploit the book stack architecturally; and some libraries, such as The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, by Neutelings Riedijk architects, do not build up but down, in the underground, to house their collections.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISSN
1559-0682
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89733
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2014.0010
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2014 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 62 (3) Winter 2014: Essays in Honor of W. Boyd Rayward: Part 2 PRIMARY
Library Trends 62 (3) Winter 2014: Essays in Honor of W. Boyd Rayward: Part 2. Edited by Alistair Black and Charles van den Heuvel.