A PIECE OF EARTH MOVED TO THE SKY
A library conceived and produced for the 150th anniversary of the Swiss National Library. It is suspended in the sky, in balance with the Earth and its rotation. Books are translated into genetic code and are being retrieved from the plants in the library's gardens.
«At that time it was also hoped that a
clarification of humanity's basic mysteries – the origin of the Library
and of time – might be found. It is verisimilar that these grave
mysteries could be explained in words: if the language of philosophers
is not sufficient, the multiform Library will have produced the
unprecedented language required, with its vocabularies and grammars.»
Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, 1941
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Produced for Swiss National Library 2000
Publication: «Building for Books», Susanne Bieri Walther Fuchs (Ed.), Birkhäuser Basel Boston Berlin
Co-operation with:
smarch Beath Mathys & Ursula Stücheli
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created 2001-05-17 | last update 2001-05-18 | Copyright (c)2002–2010 by Christian Waldvogel
A PIECE OF EARTH MOVED TO THE SKY
Our vision of the library of the future is
situated between a Garden-of-Eden ideal of enjoyment and the
nightmarish vision of a Noah’s Arch of knowledge. The prospects of
networked worlds experiencing a virus-induced crash and the promise of
artificial paradises created by a future technical intelligence have
spawned the conception of the library as an autonomous entity shielded
from natural disasters and man-made incidents. As a sensor of human
artifacts, whose contents are copied in the genetic code upon which all
life is based and permanently stored in plants, the library satisfies
our cultural need to create secure “spaces for memory”, allowing future
generations to interpret things anew.
fig. 1) The library hovering above the Swiss Alps (A piece of Earth moved to the Sky), annotated version, 2008
A metabolic structure composed of synthetic, metallic and organic materials is suspended at the optical focal point between the Alps and
the Jura Mountains in Switzerland. It is anchored by a cable, held in a
state of equilibrium with the Earth and its rotation, and kept in a
geostationary orbit. Made relatively independent from the Earth, it
satisfies that age-old need for security in which we see the basis of
all libraries and geologies of knowledge. This structure, coalescing
over the course of time into landscapes and geologies of knowledge,
accommodates indestructible core areas for preserving, encoding and
displaying original works as well as a storage space for pollen, which
– together with the entire library stock concentrated and preserved in
a restricted space within it – is linked to an electronic data network.
The peripheral zones contain the reading rooms as “pastures of
knowledge”, as well as hotels for short and long stays, vegetarian
restaurants, a sanadrome, simulation theatres, airstrips for flying
objects and shuttle stations. The entire mnemonic urban structure
receives its power by a solar-energy system.
Visitors, who approach knowledge via scents, colours and forms along
the paths of seduction, ignorance and forgetfulness, are also able to
call up all stored information directly from plants and trees. Life,
emotions and chance serve as sources for the transfer of knowledge,
rather like a journey into a fairy-tale world, on which knowledge is
conveyed through figures, myths and experiences.
We grasp the evolution of architecture as a pendulum swinging between
archaic eternal values and a flow of energy that is in the process of
liberating itself as is creates new forms of life. Against this
background, our design appears as an archaic, future-oriented, timeless
receptacle of memories held in a state of equilibrium between Heaven
and the Earth. It forms an architecture that looks simultaneously at
the future and the past in order to remember the future within this
filed of tension. This bifocal view changes every utopia into a
retro-topia – at the very moment of its inception.
And time suddenly stands still.
Excerpt from article by smarch & waldvogel in
Susanne Bieri et.al. «Bibliotheken bauen / Building for Books»,
Birkhäuser, 2001
fig. 2) The xDNA character map used to translate ASCII into DNA code
fig. 3) The lowest 8km of the suspended library. The cable is 168'000km long.
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created 2001-05-17 | Copyright (c)2002–2010 by Christian Waldvogel