Tianjin Binhai Library Opens Around a Giant Eye
MVRDV's library opened in October 2017 with white terraces of shelving that flow around a luminous sphere. It drew 10,000 visitors a day in its first week, and a debate about its books.
The Tianjin Binhai Library opened on 1 October 2017 in the Binhai New Area, the port and development zone of Tianjin on the Bohai coast. Within days its photographs had been seen around the world, and it became one of the most recognisable interiors in China.
The Eye
The library was designed by MVRDV of Rotterdam with the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute. It has five floors and 33,700 square metres, and was built in three years, a fast schedule for a building of its kind.
The centre of the building is a single hall. In the middle stands a white sphere, lit from within, which contains an auditorium of 110 seats. Around it the floor rises in terraces that curve up the walls and continue across the ceiling as contour lines. The terraces serve as stairs, seats and bookshelves at once. From the park outside, the hall is seen through an oval opening in the facade, with the sphere as the pupil, which gave the building its nickname.
The reading rooms, archives and offices lie behind and above the hall and are conventional. The library was planned to hold 1.2 million books.
The printed spines
The upper terraces of the hall were meant to be reached from rooms behind them, so that staff could fill the shelves. That access was left out when the schedule was shortened. For the opening, the backs of the upper shelves were covered with aluminium plates printed with the image of book spines. Real books are kept on the lower levels and in the reading rooms. The architects attributed the change to the tight construction schedule. The episode was widely reported, and it did not reduce the crowds. About 10,000 people a day came in the first week, and queues formed outside.
For travellers
The library is part of a cultural centre of five buildings, the others designed by Bernard Tschumi, Bing Thom and HH Design, joined by a public corridor under a glass canopy by GMP. Binhai is not central Tianjin. It is some 45 kilometres to the east. From Beijing the simplest route is the intercity high-speed train that continues beyond Tianjin to the Binhai stations, about an hour in all, followed by a short taxi ride. A passport is needed at the door, and the number of visitors in the hall is controlled at weekends.
The visit takes an hour and combines with the former concession districts of Tianjin. For another reading room worth a journey, see the Beijing City Library by Snøhetta, and on the same coast the Seashore Library at Aranya.