The Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, 1963

A visit to the Beinecke library at Yale is an experience never forgotten. Externally the library is a severe white box raised on squat concrete stilts. The interior is completely unexpected. The Vermont marble walls which are white on the outside, have a rich amber glow when the sunlight falls upon them, reflecting the color of the leather bindings of the books which are stored in a glass box in the heart of the building. The architect, Gordon Bunshaft, had originally wanted the walls to be made of alabaster or onyx, which would have been yellow on the outside and within. The Vermont marble was a reluctant substitute that turned out to be far more effective than the intended material would have been, creating one of the most powerful spaces in modern library design.

The Grimm Centre, Humboldt University, Berlin, 2009

The Grimm Centre is named after the brothers Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), chiefly known for their collection of folk tales, published in various editions between 1812 and 1857. In Germany they are also known as famous academics who began the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the most comprehensive dictionary of the German language. The Grimm Centre is not just the home of the book collection of the Grimm brothers; it is also the library of the Humboldt University of Berlin. The new building, a long-overdue replacement for one destroyed in the Second World War, was designed by the Swiss architect Max Dudler and completed in 2009. Its most important feature is its open-stack shelving: the Grimm Centre is the largest open-shelving library in Germany. The stacks are ranged over six floors on either side of a central, stepped reading room.

Utrecht University Library, Utrecht. Netherlands, 2004

The Utrecht University library by Wiel Arets completed in 2004 is designed to provide the widest possible variety in reading spaces, but there is no shortage of storage for books. It has a capacity for 4.2 million volumes and much of the material is available on open shelving. But these books provide the backdrop for the workspaces, since the shelving is used to create rooms within what is, for the most part, a single huge space, above which sealed storage and specialist reading rooms hover. The books provide color against the black background. On a typical day, students fill the reading rooms. Probably most are here not to look at the books, but to use the space.

Information, Communications and Media Centre, BTU Coutbus, Germany, 2004

The fact that BTU Cottbus felt that it had to give its new library the title of ‘The Information, Communications and Media Centre’ is a sad reflection of the current lack of confidence in the word ‘library’ despite the fact that this is still very much a home for books. Designed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog and De Meuron, the building commands the entrance to the university, standing on a slight hill above the road. Its façade is a single, undulating skin of glass etched with intertwined letters in white. These merge into a pattern that is particularly visible at night, when the building lights up like a lantern. This continuous glass skin wraps around the whole building, concealing the openings and solid walls behind it and making it impossible to gauge the building’s scale. As a result, it appears much larger than it actually is, resembling a castle tower commanding and protecting the entrance to the campus, placing the library where it should be and has been throughout history: at the very center of university life.

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James W. P. Campbell is a fellow, and the director of Studies in Architecture and the History of Art, at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He is the author of and Building St Paul’s . Brick: A World HistoryBuilding St Paul’s