Bibliotheca Alexandrina
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a library in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria that opened in 2002 near the site of the Ancient Library of Alexandria . A cultural center with museums and galleries, several research institutes, an event center and a planetarium are connected to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina . The library was built under the auspices of UNESCO and the Egyptian government and is equipped with 2,000 reading spaces and shelves for 8 million books.
Building history
The historical library of Alexandria was the most important and largest library of the classical antiquity . It was under Ptolemy I in the 3rd century BC. And is said to have owned up to 700,000 scrolls. The collection of the ancient library was badly damaged several times, the most serious destruction of the book inventory was caused by fighting in the 3rd century AD, the last works were probably lost during the Islamization of Egypt. No archaeological evidence has been preserved from the ancient library.
The idea of rebuilding the library on a historic site was first formulated in the early 1970s by a group of professors of ancient history at Alexandria University . Led by Mostafa El-Abbadi, the scientists succeeded in the mid-1980s in winning both the United Nations Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak over to the idea.
The building plot was acquired in 1985 and the symbolic laying of the foundation stone took place on June 26, 1988 by UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor . In the same year, the Egyptian government announced an architectural competition to build a new library in Alexandria, which was won by the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta with Craig Edward Dykers, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and the Austrian Christoph Kapeller as the executing architects. The construction was finally carried out by a consortium consisting of Snøhetta and the Egyptian Hamsa Associates with the participation of Egyptian, Italian and British construction companies.
To finance the project, a donor conference was held in Aswan in 1990 , at which several leaders signed a declaration in support of the construction and furnishing of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina . The governments of Iraq , Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates made a total of 65 million US dollars available, with another 26 states donating 27 million US dollars. The Egyptian government provided US $ 120 million, and UNESCO also participated in the project as the United Nations Development Program .
At the end of 1992, the 45,000 m² building site at the port of Alexandria began to be cleared. Although the library building was to be built on an area where the palaces of the Ptolemies had been in antiquity, no exploratory excavations had been carried out since the site was chosen in 1985 , as would have been in accordance with international custom. Only when the excavation of the excavation had started in 1993 , according to a report in the French daily Le Monde , in which both UNESCO and the Egyptian government were criticized, with a minimal budget of USD 20,000 , at least part of the Construction site excavations are carried out. As a result, the archaeologists succeeded in uncovering two Greek mosaic floors of exceptional quality.
Construction began in 1995. After six years of construction, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was completed in July 2001, and the opening ceremony took place on October 16, 2002 in the presence of numerous state guests. The construction costs totaled US $ 218 million, which aroused international criticism in view of the high proportion of illiterates and poverty in Egypt.
The director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the former Vice President of the World Bank , Ismail Serageldin .
Building description
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is located in close proximity to the harbor south of the Corniche harbor road and north of the philosophical and law faculty of the University of Alexandria.
The most striking feature of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the disc-shaped glass roof with a diameter of 160 m, sloping towards the sea. It rises from a water basin in front of it. The surface of the roof to the structure of a microprocessor - wafer to play, but is often compared with the rising sun from the sea. The fact that the skylights are oriented to the north means that no direct light falls into the building, but the arched structure of the roof skin with movable elements enables optimal use of daylight .
The semicircular south facade is 32 m high, windowless and made of more than 3000 gray granite slabs . It is decorated with characters from all over the world, which expresses the library's claim to collect the world's knowledge. The curvature of the outer wall follows the path of the sun, so that the individual segments are irradiated by sunlight one after the other during the day.
The building has eleven floors , four of which are underground. This means that a floor space of more than 85,000 m² is available. The interior of the library is laid out in terraces .
The building and the engineers responsible received the “ Outstanding Structure Award ” from IABSE in 2003 . The building and its responsible architects were awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Architecture in 2004.
Furnishing
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Around half of the library building is taken up by the reading room , which extends directly on the glass roof from the fourth basement to the second floor. There are a total of 2000 reading places, making the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the largest reading room in the world. Pillars in the hall are intended to remind of the ancient architectural styles, the furniture in the reading room was specially designed for the library and partly donated by the Norwegian government.
Each floor has access to the open access library , which can contain up to 500,000 volumes. Together with the library magazine located in the southern part of the building , the Bibliotheca Alexandrina can hold a total of 8 million volumes, making it the largest library in Africa and the Arab world . However, due to limited financial resources, the library's capacity is only used to a small extent. Five years after it opened, the library's holdings comprised only 530,000 titles. The library is therefore dependent on book donations. For the opening of the library, historical works on the Egyptian expedition and the construction of the Suez Canal were handed over from France, while Spain donated documents about the Moorish rule in Egypt. These works are exhibited in the library's manuscript museum.
Several specialist libraries are integrated in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina :
- A multimedia library offers sound documents, films and reproductions of works of art.
- The Taha Hussein Library gives the visually impaired access to literature.
- There are special library areas for children and young people.
- The Nobel Section collects publications from all Nobel Prize winners in literature .
One focus of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is digital archiving. The entrepreneur Brewster Kahle donated a backup copy of the Internet Archive he operated to the library , which is accessible on more than 200 computers. The library itself is involved in the digitization of books as part of the Million Book Project .
Affiliated facilities
To the northwest of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a planetarium , the black sphere of which forms an ensemble with the library building. The dome of the planetarium has a diameter of 14 m and can also be used for showing IMAX films. A museum on the history of science is located in the basement of the planetarium .
There are two more museums in the library. In addition to finds from the excavations before the library was built, the Archaeological Museum presents exhibits from the history of Egypt, including statues from the Hellenistic period that were recovered by underwater archaeologists from the port of Alexandria . The manuscript museum shows old manuscripts and rare books and houses a microfilm archive with photographs of old manuscripts. A research center for the restoration of old manuscripts is attached to the museum.
Other research centers within the Bibliotheca Alexandrina are dedicated to calligraphy , information science and the regional promotion of scholars (Center for Special Studies and Programs) .
A congress center was completed as early as 1991, which, like all other facilities, is now part of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and borders the library to the west. There is an underground corridor between the two buildings. The large hall of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Conference Center (BACC) can accommodate more than 1,600 guests, and there are also a number of smaller halls and exhibition rooms available. The conference program is thematically diversified, but a special focus is on the culture and politics of the Arab and Muslim world.
The fourth Wikimania conference was held from July 17th to 19th, 2008 at the BACC .
See also
- Egyptian National Library in Cairo
literature
- Mostafa El-Abbadi: Life and Fate of the ancient library of Alexandria . UNESCO, Paris 1992, ISBN 92-3-102632-1 .
- Mahmoud Hamza, Mashhour Ghoneim: Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt: Foundation and Structural Design . In Structural Engineering International , Vol. 13, No. 4, 2003, pp. 254-258, ISSN 1016-8664 .
- Christoph Kapeller: The new library of Alexandria . In: Büchereiperspektiven , No. 1, 2004, pp. 12-17, ISSN 1607-7172 .
- Mohsen Zahran: The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina: Reflections on a Journey of Achievements . Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria 2007, ISBN 977-6163-92-0 .
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Bernd Musa: The daring mission of the new temple of knowledge - Spiegel Online , April 25, 2010
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Kristina Bergmann: The digital sun disk of Alexandria . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , No. 119, May 27, 2002.
- ↑ Marie Hüllenkremer: A sun for the Orient . In: Die Zeit , No. 10, March 2, 1990.
- ↑ Alexander Stille : Journeys to the end of the story . Translation Karl-Heinz Silber. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51081-7 , pp. 316-317.
- ↑ Karin Tschavgova: Garbage dumps and architecture superlatives . In: Der Standard , October 6, 2002
- ↑ a b CNN : Construction of new Alexandria library enters final months ( Memento from November 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) from August 9, 2000.
- ↑ Facts and Figures. (No longer available online.) In: Website of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina . Archived from the original on October 15, 2008 ; accessed on July 1, 2018 .
- ↑ Achim Wahrenberg: The new papyrus. In: Berliner Zeitung . May 25, 2002, accessed July 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Youssef Eldakar, Khalid El-Gazzar, Noha Adly, Magdy Nagi: The Million Book Project at Bibliotheca Alexandrina ( Memento of July 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 527 kB) . Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE, Vol. 6a, 2005, pp. 1327-1340.
- ^ Act No. 1 of 2001, text of the law. (No longer available online.) In: Website of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina . Archived from the original on August 20, 2008 ; accessed on July 1, 2018 .
Coordinates: 31 ° 13 ' N , 29 ° 55' E