A Towering Temple Of Bookshelves For Books And Readers

This library in Japan is made with bookshelves. Which doesn’t sound all that cool, right? A library in ordinary town, middle America has freaking bookshelves. But these bookshelves are 9m tall, line the walls and tower over the library.

What’s impressive is that instead of having bookshelves placed against the walls of the library, the walls are the bookshelves. The architect, Sou Fujimoto, wanted to create a colossally long bookshelf that would spiral inward to create a seemingly never ending wall of books. Hell, he even made the outside of the library a bookshelf too. The idea, for him, was to create a library where it’s not just a home for books but a shelter provided by books.

Located in Musashino Art University Museum in Japan, the library is two storeys tall and will be home to over 200,000 books within a 6500sqm floor space. [ArchDaily]

Image: Daici Ano

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