27901 New Forms Taschen 116

Pigcs 124/125 Will Brud*r

Pho«nix Central Library Phoenix, Arizona, 1988-95

With a relatively Iow $97.60 per square foot cost, this library de-serves morę than a little attention in Europę, where massive and costly libraries have been erected, most notably in London and Pans Related to its surroundings through the architect‘s sense of local geology, the buildmg's profile is extremely modern, and it is undoubtedly well suited internally to the evolution toward new media that public libraries are now encountering.

reduce the height of the towers, to better protea the volumes kept in them, and to increase the size of the stacks situated in the base of the complex. Despite a Modernist concept based in good part on the architect's admiration for Minimalist artists like Carl Andre and Richard Serra, the harsh aspects of the Bibliotheque are somewhat softened by the central garden, visible essentially from the reading rooms. By creating this sunken font of greenery, Dominique Perrault intended to make reference to the Garden of Eden, to the Original Sin and thus to the origin of the knowledge contained in the millions of volumes kept here. Many critics have retamed only the Modernist geometry of the towers to criticize this project as being behind the times in terms of architectural thinking, but the strong presence of the library, especially as viewed from within, indeed its very size, makes it a project to be reckoned with. There is certainly a case to be madę for the fact that a simple analysis of its geometry is not sufficient to grasp the naturę of this building. The central garden is an unusual aspect, as is the f requent use of unusual materials, such as a kind of "chain mail” stainless Steel ceiling materiał within. Perrault himself points out that Modernist buildings rarely madę a point of digging into the earth, as does his sunken garden. Rather, like Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, they tended to want to rise about the ground, either on pilotis or by sitting lightly on their sites. In an almost Freudian way, Perrault claims that the Bibliotheque is far removed from

24 Places Of Gathering