Real Gabinete Português de Leitura | Rio de Janeiro

The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura (in English: Royal Portuguese Reading Room) has the largest and most valuable literary of Portuguese outside Portugal. Constructed between 1880 and 1887, it has more than 350,000 volumes in a library, fully computerized, which brings together rare books from the 16th, 17th and 18th. The library receives a copy of Portugal for each of the works published in the country according to its status of “legal deposit”. Its incredible architecture beauty and its rich collection transport you to the 19th century when you visit this library in Rio de Janeiro.

Image Credit BORIS G

Stuttgart City Library, Germany

The new Stuttgart City Library by Yi Architects was on October 21, 2011.  After winning a competition for the project in 1999, the new library for Stuttgart in southern Germany has finally been unveiled.  Yi Architects have shared with us the drawings and images of the project. The Stuttgart City Library was chosen in Mailänder Platz, an area that is perceived to be a future city center growing out of the location of the library. With this in mind, the architects chose to physically express the importance of this cultural center by giving the building a grand physical presence. The building takes the form of cube with an edge length of 45 meters. It is constructed out of pale grey fair-faced concrete that visually frames an array of 9 x 9 frosted glass bricks. The shell is designed as a double façade that includes the glass brick level and an inner mullion/transom façade as the thermal building shell.

Image credit PAPFOO