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Baroque Libraries: The Journey to Getting Lost in a Book

Published onFeb 20, 2020
Baroque Libraries: The Journey to Getting Lost in a Book

Pen on Paper

October 2017

To write a book is to allow an outsider into a part of your mind, a part you believe is worth sharing. To read a book is to have a piece of someone else, to own it and hold it in your hands. The act is an intimate one, an opening up of the spirit. The sequence of the Library prepares the reader for this encounter. The Reading Room is the stage for this encounter.

I traveled as an Eidlitz Fellow to Austria, Italy, and the Czech Repbulic in search of places that inspire the readers within us. Baroque Monasteries reflect a time when the reading room lined with books was a novelty. It was a treasure. The dramatic unveiling of such rooms evolved into elaborate transitions from the outside world, be it mountains or dense streetscapes, into the inner sanctuary (and back out). The relationship to the exterior, the quality of light, the texture, the proportion and scale, and the relationship between rooms were careful considerations in baroque architecture. Through the following series of leporello notebooks, I sought to capture this experience. 


Comments
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Muriel Lansky:

Flower delivery Canada Those are beautiful libraries that I find very inspiring. In Europe, architecture seems to play a more important role than in the US, where things are too practical when it comes to learning.

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