Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center
The Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center in Berlin district center of the district of the same combines the Central Library of the University Library of the Humboldt University and the Computer and Media Service (CMS) of Humboldt University . The building, named after the Brothers Grimm , opened on October 12, 2009.
With around two million volumes, it is the largest contiguous library inventory available in German-speaking countries. In addition to the old central library, there are twelve former branch libraries for the humanities and cultural sciences as well as social and economic sciences . The other nine branch libraries and the university archive remained at their previous locations in various districts of Berlin.
Location and building
The Grimm Center is located directly on the Stadtbahn (north of this) between the Friedrichstrasse train station and the main building of the university. The property with the address Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse 1–3 is located between Planckstrasse and Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse.
It is a ten-story building designed by the Swiss architect Max Dudler , the main usable area is 20,296 m². The core of the library is a reading room, unique in terms of its dimensions and design, which is 70 meters long, 12 meters wide and 20 meters high.
A total of 2.5 million volumes are stored in the Grimm Center, around two million of which are available on the open access list. There is also a small cafeteria , rooms for video conferences , an auditorium with around 180 seats and eight group work rooms as well as 55 individual work cubicles. A total of 1200 workstations are available, around 500 of which are equipped with computers .
history
The university library of the Humboldt University has existed since 1831 and from 1910 was housed in the premises of the State Library in the immediate vicinity of the main building of the university. Initially, the library was only to be temporarily housed there, but no other building was ever found. In the course of the renovation of the State Library, the university library had to move out there in June 2005 and it was decided to build a new building.
In the course of time, in addition to the central library, a large number of branch and branch libraries had formed at the university. In the GDR , a start was made to centralize these libraries and to build up a single-tier library system, which was retained even after the political change . On the science campus in Adlershof , the science branch library was created in 2003 by amalgamating the books from the departments of mathematics , physics , computer science , chemistry , geography and psychology .
Similar plans were made for the central library: this was merged with twelve branch and sub-libraries for the humanities, cultural and social sciences and economics. In mid-2004, after years of searching, the location was chosen, at the beginning of 2005 the architectural competition was completed and at the end of 2005 the first preparatory construction work began. The official groundbreaking ceremony took place on August 22, 2006. The building was opened on October 12, 2009.
criticism
The location and design of the cloakroom and locker area is criticized as being too narrow and poorly signposted. The cloakroom is in the basement, where it can only be reached via a narrow, multiple kinked stairwell in a dead end situation. In the beginning there were also problems with the number of cloakroom lockers. The original number of around 1200 places has been increased to around 1500 places by setting up additional cloakroom spaces in the entrance hall in addition to the basement cloakroom, which can be served with cafeteria cards. Some of the cellar lockers can be used with a MensaCard, but most of them can be used with a padlock.
Martin Mosebach (Büchner Prize winner 2007) has written extensive praise from a writer's point of view. What is striking is the discrepancy between the general praise of politicians and the established architectural criticism in the newspaper columns, which essentially relates to the design of the facade and the stair-shaped main reading room, and the widely documented criticism by users of space, acoustics, traffic routes (stairs, Elevators, toilets, barrier-free access, orientation), air conditioning, copying facilities and cloakroom. The fact that the external aesthetic effect came into conflict with the actual usability during the planning is also evident from the self-portrayal of the library: “The building is based on the axial dimension of the shelves as a grid, a clear reminiscence of the importance of the open access holdings . The special attention paid to symmetry in the planning phase did not always make it easy to represent the variety of functions spatially. "
Awards
The building received the BDA Berlin Prize in 2009, the Berlin Architecture Prize 2009, the BDA Architecture Prize “Nike” in 2010 (in the “Best Urban Development Interpretation” category), and in 2011 the German Natural Stone Prize from the German Natural Stone Association. V. (DNV) and the Access City Award for accessibility in 2013.
Web links
- Website of the Grimm Center at HU Berlin
- Photos on the website of the architect Max Dudler
- HU home zone
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Well of Knowledge" . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 20, 2010, now also in the book “Bibliothek” (Berlin 2010) with contributions by Max Dudler , Martin Mosebach and Milan Bulaty, director of the ZBHU.
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ [3]
- ↑ [4]
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ [5]
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from November 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ [6]
- ↑ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center, Berlin at the BDA, archive link.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ [7]
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '14 " N , 13 ° 23' 28" E