Das Leben in Berlin ist wunderbar - Part 4
[ Das Leben in Berlin ist wunderbar ]
I want to write about this since the first day I saw it. It is not stunning that I’ve found it is user-friendly, perfectly systemized and accessible – hey, we are in Germany – but the design impressed some things that I’ve always alarmingly guessed and finally I saw them shaped in the pure and exact Deutsch manner. No compromise!As an academician on a research trip it can easily reach your mind that I am talking about the Library of the Berlin Technical University. This is where we are supposed to shelter and find cure from the dull everyday life, aren’t we? ;)).
I was both aesthetically and ideologically filled to my emotional and logical top by the Volkswagen construction hall turned into a university library. I do not know why (maybe haunted by the inviting header images that most of the library web-pages promote) but I always liked to see the library as a cozy and beautifully wood worn and burdened with restless creativity place… You should agree that wood adds some wisdom to the scene!
And now!!! … (You can see further down). It was like a sudden enlightenment for my deluded academic senses and prejudices… So much sterility, concrete, linoleum in my favourite pale olive green! There is no place for snobbish illusions that you can find something undiscovered here, dusty scrolls, solitude… Ts! All knowledge secrets are systemized, catalogued and exposed, man. And you can even touch them without the assistance of the fabled Librarian [See U. Eco].
It was a catharsis!
…
After all… now it looks like a mental home. And as you can see from the last snap they treat me well. I am not sure what they give me but I am happy! ;))
1 Attachment(s)
< previous Posting next >
<< previous Topic next >>
Sofia
Antworten
You know, in the moment you've mentioned the green linoleum and the concrete, I've smelled something wrong. Last year I was in Graz, second biggest city in Austria and the library of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences was excactly the same - the same many levels, red metal shelves with wheels for the books and sterile luminescent light. The readers' desks were directly next to the concrete walls. It was very convinient however my association was with concentration camp, not mental institution ;)
Just to add that today I have been in the Library of the Free University Berlin... well, words are useless! [© Philipp von Recklinghausen]
It is called "The Berlin Brain". :) Nice name for a library.