ABSTRACT
The public library building is enjoying a new era of prestige across the world, with considerable architectural innovation during the past twenty years. Today, however, libraries are as much about creating places where people meet, read, discuss and explore ideas, as they are about the collection and administration of books in an ordered form. The idea of the modern public library as a ‘living room in the city’ is becoming a vital feature of modern urban culture, and architects are having to respond to this change of role. Towards the end of this chapter a schema is proposed which compares and contrasts the distinctive attributes of the traditional public library and the modern public library architectural paradigms. Such changes necessitate a major shift in the way these new building projects are developed and commissioned, and these highly political procurement and development processes are discussed.
