Living Library: Wiel Arets University Library Utrecht

by Marijke Beek (Editor)

This innovative look at the sleek new library at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, designed by the renowned architect Wiel Arets, takes readers on a floor-by-floor tour while it draws wider implications about the changing role of the library in the twenty-first century. Arets’ design for the Utrecht University Library embodies the fundamental changes now taking place in library architecture in the information age. Dynamically designed to echo the building’s construction, this book allows readers to experience every floor, as well as its foundations. Woven throughout are interviews and essays that focus on Arets’ inspired design, how it fits in with the campus as a whole, and other perspectives on library design from renowned architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Toyo Ito, Jacques Herzog & de Meuron, and Dominique Perrault. Other highlights of the book include an essay, "In the Library," which was commissioned specifically for this book; a series of photographs of international libraries by acclaimed photographer Candida Höfer; an interview with a "digital librarian," and many other interesting and little known facts, figures, quotations and images—each of which proves that the libraries of tomorrow will bear little resemblance to those of yesterday.

452 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2005