The Dutch architectural firm MVRDV in collaboration with local architects TUPDI has completed the Tianjin Binhai Library, an extraordinary space for the city of Tianjin, China.
In the heart of this unique building, which was built in only three years, a spherical auditorium called The Eye sets the tone and invites you to open wide your eyes. In this magnificent infrastructure immortalized by the photographer Ossip van Duivenbode, millions of books occupy endless bookcases around the luminous orb, with colossal shelves rising to the ceiling. Enough to make literature lovers dizzy.
This 33,700m2 cultural centre features a luminous spherical auditorium around with floor-to-ceiling bookcases cascade. The undulating bookshelf is the building’s main spatial device and is used both to frame the space and to create stairs, seating, the layered ceiling and even louvres on the façade.
The library also contains extensive educational facilities, arrayed along the edges of the interior and accessible through the main atrium space of five different levels. The public program is supported by subterranean service spaces, book storage, and a large archive.
From the ground floor, visitors can easily access reading areas for children and the elderly, the auditorium, the main entrance, terraced access to the floors above and connected to the cultural complex.
Photography by Ossip van Duivenbode
