Sou Fujimoto Musashino Art University Museum and Library

Acting as a huge ark, a total of 200,000 units, of which 100,000 will be in an open-archive, while the other half, within a closed-archive, rests within this double-storey library of 6,500㎡ in floor area. It is a library made from bookshelves.

When I thought of the elements which compose an ultimate library, I imagined books, bookshelves, light and the atmosphere. I imagined a place encircled by a single bookshelf in the form of a spiral.

The domain encased within the infinite spiral itself is the library. An infinite forest of books is created from the layering of 9m high walls, punctuated by large apertures.

This spiral sequence of the bookshelf continues, eventually wrapping the periphery of the site as the external wall to allow the external appearance of the building to share the same elemental composition of the bookshelf as the library.

One’s encounter with the colossally long bookshelf, within the university landscape, registers instantaneously as a library, yet astonishing in its dreamlike simplicity. It is the library most library-like and the simplest library.