Philological Library

Building entrance of the Philological Library

The Philological Library is a research library of the Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin). The collection focuses on the Philological, ie on language and literature. The library building in Berlin's Dahlem district was designed by Norman Foster and opened in 2005.

Collection Profile

The library contains the holdings of the formerly independent philological institute libraries and the former library of the Institute of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities and other institutes of the Free University of Berlin. By the year 2005, these were at several separate locations. By the Philological Library they were first united. The library consisted of 2005 in the areas of linguistics and literary studies, a total of 700,000 books, subscriptions to over 800 magazines and newspapers. He divided the former branch libraries according to the following departments:

• General and Comparative Literature, Comparative Linguistics
• Ancient American Studies and Latin American Studies,
• English,
• Byzantine and Modern Greek,
• German,
• Indo-European studies,
• Indology,
• Classical Philology,
• Medieval Latin,
• Dutch studies,
• Philosophy ( since 2007),
• Romance,
• Slavic Studies.

With 175,000 volumes of the stock of the Germanic branch library the largest in Germany, the Netherlands with 40,000 volumes is the second largest collection. Large departments are also the English and the Romance languages ​​, the latter with over 145,000 volumes. Other important special collections can be found, inter alia, the Catalan language and literature and the French-language literature in Canada. But smaller philology as the Galician language have extensive stocks; and also the modern Greek stock is 24,000 volumes of the largest in Germany.

Not represented in the library, however, is the field of American Studies. He is also still lying at the nearby John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies.

Use situation

The library is a reference library with restricted borrowing. 98 % of the books are freely accessible and need not be pre-ordered. Only particularly rare or valuable examples, such as incunabula can be viewed on request. The Philological Library has 633 reading spaces on five levels and is fully equipped with Wireless LAN. 94 Internet research terminals and 14 PC workstations pool complete the offer. All terminals are connected to the digital printing and scanning system of the library, which allows the user a fee to copy pages of a book not only continues, but scan and further editing multimedia. The library is open weekdays 9:00 to 22:00 and Saturday and Sunday from 10.00 bis 20.00 clock, due to the great popularity during the test phase, however, only those students available, who are enrolled at that time in one of the subjects represented there.

The library is part of the library system of the University of Berlin, which is the greatest of all German universities with a media collection of approximately 8.5 million volumes and 20,000 current periodicals.

Architecture

The new Philological Library was accompanied by the renovation and conversion of an existing building complex, the so-called rust and Silberlaube. This was designed by the architectural group Team 10 construction consists of a sprawling polycentric structure, which is composed of different modular buildings part. Here, two - to three-storey buildings grouped around a variety leafy courtyards. In this present group of buildings, the new library was built as an almost completely free -standing unit. In order to create this space, the merging of six courtyards of the rust bucket was required.

The British architect and designer Norman Foster competition of the appraiser jointly by the State of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin won the 1997 publicly announced construction project. Start of asbestos removal of rust and Silberlaube was in 1999, construction of the library in 2001. It was completed in 2005 after four years of construction, while the renovation of individual old - areas lasted until the year 2007. Even today, the "brain " is being renovated because of the leaky outer shell. Originally, Foster's design for the installation of the Philological Library before a residential development of the newly created courtyard, which should be guided in their structure to the present fleet. There were plans for curved glass surfaces, which should be here by means of a transparent- light and filigree roof structure of steel and glass, especially in the height as close as possible to adapt to the adjacent parts of the old rust bucket. Similar to the Reichstag building in Berlin, however, the renowned architect had to revise several times for reasons of cost, resulting in a completely different concept and to the building in its present form, belongs stylistically to the flow of blob architecture originated design.

The library now consists of a compact, multi-storey reinforced concrete building with two supply cores. This " inner Construction " is widely embraced by a self-supporting dome-like building envelope without being touched by it: The outer shell of the double-shell structure is composed of closed and transparent panels. This change from aluminum segments, aeration units and double glazed panes supported by a hidden steel frame construction. It is barely visible as a supporting truss between the outer and inner shell.

On aerial photographs and bird's-eye remembers the outer form of a voluminous, gently arching silvery- shining drops that fell in the courtyard and connected only at two small spots with rust bucket. Overall, the building measures a length of 64 meters, a height of 19 meters and a width of 55 meters. The main floor space of 6,290 m², the parking capacity 800,000 books.

The inner shell designed Foster of glass fiber fabric with transparent faces. The latter allow glimpses to the outside and into the sky. Otherwise, this white segmented polymer membranes filter to the light planning the sunlight and create a bright working atmosphere inside. There, the two service cores take on the stairwells, elevators, restrooms and technical facilities. To this center are grouped above the other, the individual all-around walk- building levels and taper similar to the top, a free-standing cake stand. However, the bases of the levels are not uniform circular: curved run the edges and describe the shape of waves or serpentine. With this, the architect achieved a considerable increase of the edge lengths and increased at the same time, the number of still not present in sufficient quantity reading places, because they are located at the edges: A long " work table band" the parapet attracts following at the edge of each plane along. The single workstation is equipped with a reading lamp, sockets and a chair whose model was designed by the architect and furniture designer Egon Eiermann. The books are kept in anthracite colored steel shelves that are central to the library - grouped around the power cores and up to the edge zones zoom reaching. At the top level there is a reading lounge with big red armchairs. Otherwise it was anything that could interfere with a concentrated working atmosphere banished from the library: The library management, seminar and group study rooms are located in the old building, which is accessible via an underground tunnel, even on the installation of walls without so on compliance important for the working atmosphere is always calm himself strictly enforced during assembly and locking of the relative to the size of the library economical sized lockers in also open entrance area.

All floors are cut in the middle, creating a symmetrical central axis arises with Atrium, located at the end point of the entrance, and opposite him an open staircase. During the construction by its shape and color anmutet overall futuristic, arises in some places a bizarre contrast: How are both the panels at the entrance, as well as the visible only in some places -dimensional framework of the building envelope in the colors of yellow and orange. This Norman Foster tried to connect to rust and silver arbor, which also has a color in certain places ( sun awnings and carpets ).

Even before its opening, the building was known as " Berlin Brain " (English ): Because of the characteristic, round - arched shape of its outer shell, and the folded, arranged in two hemispheres building levels inside resembles the architecture of the anatomy of a human brain, which is surrounded and protected by its skull. In Berlin the Philological Library next to the Reichstag building is the second building project implemented by Norman Foster. He has created with its implementation, a further attraction, their unusual architecture attracts many visitors.

Prizes and awards

In November 2006, the Philological Library with the " Berlin Architecture Award " by the Berlin State Association was awarded the Association of German Architects. The prize awarded every three years award went together to London architects Foster and Partners and the Free University of Berlin and the State of Berlin as builders. In addition, the library has received one of the awards to the German Architecture Prize 2007 in August 2007. This award is considered the most prestigious award of its kind

Initiative " Land of Ideas"

Soccer World Cup 2006 the Philological Library of the FC Germany GmbH has been selected to participate in the initiative " Germany - Land of Ideas" to participate. Under the title "Explore The Berlin Brain " guided tours, lectures and scientific presentations were held on 11 April 2006 in the library, scientists contributed poems. The variety of topics covered here all subject areas of the library and led from the world literature in the era of globalization, the Library of Alexandria as the mother of all scientific libraries to football in Latin America. In the evening, the play The uprising by CJ Hopkins had its world premiere.