Located in the Binhai Cultural District In Tianjin, the five-story library, which was designed by Dutch design firm MVRDV in […]
Located in the Binhai Cultural District In Tianjin, the five-story library, which was designed by Dutch design firm MVRDV in collaboration with the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute (TUPDI) and has since been dubbed “The Eye of Binhai”, covers 34,000 square metres and can hold up to 1.2 million books.
“The Eye is the centre of the library,” MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas said. “It hollows out the building and creates, out of bookshelves, an environment to sit, to read, to hang out, to climb and to access, to create an organic social space. In its heart is the auditorium which mirrors the environment, giving a 360-degree panorama of the space inside, a truly reflective and pensive environment.”
Taking just three years to complete, the library features a reading area on the ground floor, lounge areas in the middle sections and offices, meeting spaces, and computer/audio rooms at the top.
Turns out, most of these futuristic-looking floor to ceiling shelves are painted to look like they’re full of books, but in reality, much of the covers in the hall are printed images. The real books are stored in other rooms in the building.
The five-storey building currently contains 200,000 books.
An average of 15,000 visitors flock to the library every weekend.