Les chambres de bois: Montreal's handsome new Bibliotheque is a lively repository of Quebecois culture.An island of seven million francophones isolated within a North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. sea of 330 million anglophones, the politics of language has always been acute in the Canadian province Noun 1. Canadian province - Canada is divided into 12 provinces for administrative purposes province, state - the territory occupied by one of the constituent administrative districts of a nation; "his state is in the deep south" of Quebec. The Grande Bibliotheque du Quebec (GBQ GBq Gigabecquerel (SI) GBQ The Good, The Bad & The Queen (UK band) GBQ Green Business Quarterly (environmental publication) ) is an emblem of the success of public policies devised in recent decades to protect the use of French there; the building is both a repository for the province's literary history, and a dynamic hub for its contemporary culture. Designed by Vancouver's John and Patricia Patkau, it is also public architecture and city-building of the first order. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With its combination of research library, rare books collection, children's zone, multiple public reading rooms, multi-media holdings, gallery and theatre, the sheer size and range of functions arrayed within the Grande Bibliotheque place it firmly in the architectural line of recent North American downtown libraries. While most of its holdings may be in French, its sister designs are to be found in Phoenix (Will Bruder Will Bruder (born in 1946 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American architect most active in the American southwest. His ability to address the requirements of site, user experience, craftsmanship, and energy conservation, while still producing formally accomplished and beautiful , AR March 1996) and Seattle (Rem Koolhaas, AR August 2004), not the Parisian tradition from Labrouste's Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve through Piano and Rogers' Pompidou Centre (containing, amazingly, France's first public lending library) to Dominique Perrault's Bibliotheque Nationale (AR July 1995). Like her contemporary Mavis Gallant, Anne Hebert was a Quebec writer who spent much of her career in Paris. A lyrical novel she wrote there--Les chambres de bois--served as an initial source of inspiration to the Patkau design team. Their GBQ concept is predicated on two louvred 'wooden rooms' contained within a similarly louvred glass box, nearly filling an entire super-block assembled between bohemian rue St Denis Denis, king of Portugal: see Diniz. , an ungainly university pavilion, and the inter-city bus station, all of these set over a major Metro connection point. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] According to Patkau associate designer Michael Cunningham, early designs proposed pale-green oxidised Adj. 1. oxidised - combined with or having undergone a chemical reaction with oxygen; "the oxidized form of iodine" oxidized copper shingles shingles: see herpes zoster. shingles or herpes zoster Acute viral skin and nerve infection. Groups of small blisters appear along certain nerve segments, most often on the back, sometimes after a dull ache at the site; pain becomes as cladding--alluding to Montreal church towers and 'chateau chapeaux' in that material--but for cost reasons this was changed to the glass louvres in the same colour, most likely a better foil to surrounding brick buildings than the metal sheets would have been. Certainly, the scale and textures of the coloured glass and wooden interior constructions resonate against the blunter concrete structure, the GBQ having an unusual--and welcome--clarity of construction. Library patrons emerge from the Metro station or enter from a recessed corner entrance to encounter the first and largest of the two 'wooden rooms' wrapping the main library stacks. A sequence of quite differing reading rooms and carrel Car·rel , Alexis 1873-1944. French-born American surgeon and biologist. He won a 1912 Nobel Prize for his work on vascular ligature and grafting of blood vessels and organs. spaces are arrayed along the GBQ's main pedestrian path, as it moves up and around all sides of these slatted wooden walls, providing readers with a wide variety of light, view and privacy conditions. These spatial decisions are inverted inverted reverse in position, direction or order. inverted L block a pattern of local filtration anesthesia commonly used in laparotomy in the ox. for the second and smaller 'wooden room', home to la collection Quebecoise's literary documents and rare books. A skylit reading room demurs serenely at centre, surrounded by stacks in the nineteenth-century manner. This dynamic balance of introverted in·tro·vert·ed adj. Marked by interest in or preoccupation with oneself or one's own thoughts as opposed to others or the environment. and extroverted ex·tro·vert·ed also ex·tra·vert·ed adj. Marked by interest in and behavior directed toward others or the environment as opposed to or to the exclusion of self; gregarious or outgoing: reader's spaces is an apt architectural metaphor for Montreal and contemporary Quebec, where enduring local traditions have now come to co-exist comfortably with the finessing of global economic and technological forces. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Quebec is doing more to fund and promote architectural competitions than anywhere else in the New World, and the GBQ design was selected by a well-run contest, where Zaha Hadid came second. 'Libraries are not really about sculptural form in the city', says John Patkau of both her scheme and Koolhaas' Seattle design. Patkau points out that their building has almost the same size and features as the Seattle library, but at just under US $50 million for the library and US $7 million for a related parking garage, it was built for one third the cost: 'We were obliged to find poetics in our pragmatics'. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion