Warsaw University Library
The University Library Warsaw is a book and journal collection in Warsaw , Poland , in 1816 for the teachers and students of the University of Warsaw founded. After the building was used on the university campus, the facility received a new building, which was built in the Powiśle district according to plans by two Polish architects and inaugurated in 1999.
history
The first director of the library was Samuel Bogumił Linde . At the beginning of the 20th century, the collection on the university campus near the Kazimierz Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street was given its own modern library building, in the design of which Fritz Milkau played a key role . After around 100 years and the steady growth of the collections, the construction of a new building that would meet the current fire protection requirements became urgently necessary. After the fall of 1989, the building of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party ( PVAP) was declared state property. The idea of housing a library in a typical office building turned out to be impractical. The building was rented to the newly established Warsaw Stock Exchange , and the profit from the rent was used to finance the construction of the new university library in the Powiśle district .
In 1993 a competition was announced, which the architects Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski won. Construction began in 1995 and lasted until 1999. At the same time, the outdoor area around the library was completely redesigned.
architecture
The building, inaugurated on December 15, 1999, consists of a four-story main block and a low front building with a passage in between. A botanical garden with an area of 1.5 hectares was laid out on the roof according to plans by landscape architect Irena Bajerska and opened on June 12, 2002. It is one of the largest roof gardens in Europe, but it is only accessible via stairs and is therefore not barrier-free . From here there is a broad view over Warsaw and the Vistula to the Narodowy Stadium . The Kulturpalast also stands out from the cityscape.
The total volume of all library rooms is 260,000 m³, the usable area is given as 64,000 m². As of December 2012, the holdings totaled almost 3.1 million works, including:
- 1.936 675 million books,
- 708,911 magazines as well as special collections, textbooks and modern media.
In the entrance area there are statues of the philosophers Kazimierz Twardowski , Jan Łukasiewicz , Alfred Tarski and Stanisław Leśniewski on four very high columns . However, they turn their backs on the visitors of the reading room and, on the other hand, look out of the glass gable.
The entire facade of the vestibule is clad with copper plates and high windows let in natural light in between. On the west side - arranged in book form and designed in this way - there are eight panels with:
- Notes from a fragment of the B minor étude by Karol Szymanowski ,
- mathematical formula of the normal distribution , the pi number, the structure of a nucleic acid, etc. a.
- a text in the Sanskrit language with fragments of the Rigveda a . a.,
- a text in Hebrew with the Old Testament text from Ezekiel 3: 1-3,
- a text in Arabic from the Book of Animals (author al-Jahiz ),
- a text in Greek from the dialogue Phaedrus of Plato ,
- a text in Old Russian from the Nestor Chronicle from the beginning of the 12th century,
- a text in old Polish language Declaration of Virtue by Jan Kochanowski .
The building with its unconventional architecture is already one of the city's attractions and a popular meeting place for Warsaw students.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Monthly report of the Corps Masovia No. 2 (December 1, 1919)
- ↑ Sprawozdanie Biblioteki Uniwersyteckiej w Warszawie i bibliotek wydziałowych UW za rok 2012 ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Warszawa 2013
Coordinates: 52 ° 14 ′ 31.3 " N , 21 ° 1 ′ 29.4" E