The Developments, Functions, & Architecture of the (Public) Library

Please join us for a lecture on library architecture by Professor Botond Bognar, Edgar A. Tafel Endowed Chair in Architecture, University Scholar, and Laureate of the Architectural Institute of Japan.

Professor Bognar will address on important changes in the programmatic, spatial, or architectural developments of the public library, this increasingly significant public institution. Social, cultural, and technological revolutions, including our current day digital technology, have impacted both the kind of available information, its mode of use, way of its handling and, of course, the type of the library building itself. Today, new and expanded activities are turning the library into a place of not only disseminating information, but, in its role of generating knowledge, also open and active community centers or interactive centers of social life. Among the several examples to be shown and discussed will be the Carré d’Art Bibliotheque in Nimes, France (1993); the Sendai Mediatheque in Japan (2001); the National and Public Libraries of France in Paris (1994) and of Singapore (2005); the Musashino Art University Library in Tokyo, Japan (2011); the Seattle Central Public Library in the United States (2004); and the Guangzhou Public Library in China (2013).