Description

The Kai Feng Humanities and Social Sciences Library of Tsinghua University opened in 2011 on the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the institution. Sited on the former imperial gardens of the Qing Dynasty in northern Beijing, Tsinghua is one of the leading universities in China. Renowned for research in sciences and engineering, it has earned the nickname, “MIT of China”. Since the last decades of the 20^th century the university has further developed a multi-disciplinary structure with the incorporation of 14 schools including the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. On a campus with six other libraries, the opening of the 20,000 m² library dedicated to this subject is part of what university official Hu Heping calls a “boost and a solid foundation for Tsinghua to accomplish new achievements in its humanities and social science research for the next 100 years.”

Located on the east side of campus, the library is characterized by a stature distinctive to its geometry. A massive truncated cone nestles within a long bar building fronting the main campus road. The conic form increases in width from the ground level to the third level while a skylit, four-story central void within another truncated cone inversely decreases in width at the same time. The dynamic space that mediates between the expanding shell and the contracting inner void is occupied by the collection. The shelves are radially arranged with study carrels both at the deep, recessed windows on the outer edge and at the inner atrium whose edge is delineated by a delicate wood screen guardrail. The four-story bar building with its support spaces, individual study rooms, grouped carrels and a research center follows an orthogonal internal configuration validating its rectangular bar shape. The form of the bar erodes to allow the full emergence of the conic shape. This intersection is marked on each floor by “information points”, small reference stations manned by a librarian. Defining the limits of each form, these points serve as the key to the building as a whole.

In an interview, Botta said that, “Architecture today often abdicates one of its primary functions; to orient us in space. Martin Heidegger said that man inhabits only when he has the possibility of orienting himself inside a space. I believe this to be a beautiful definition. Otherwise we are overwhelmed. We need reference points, to know the center and the limit of a place, two extraordinary conditions that are being forgotten these days.” The spatial clarity of the two library volumes make evident the center and the limits, a representation of Botta’s belief in pure forms as a way to understanding space.

While the building makes reference to primordial forms, the materials and construction details anchor it firmly in the present day. Deep openings in the brick facade of the conic volume read as massive voids from afar. They are, in fact, detailed to express the brick as thin veneer. Similarly, the T-shaped openings in the bar building resolve themselves as thin walls of brick hanging in mid-air, behind which a glazed wall is revealed. The truth told in the details corroborates Botta’s belief that “Architecture is an ethical field before being an aesthetic one.”

Originally the University was founded on funds from the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program, suggested in 1906 by the pioneer American missionary, Arthur H. Smith, as a Chinese Student Educational Plan to President Roosevelt. The main point of the plan was to develop higher education in China, particularly by sending Chinese students to American colleges who were previously prepared for their sojourn at a school in Beijing, namely Tsinghua University. Thus the history of the University harkens back to Western ties of the early 20^th century. An architectural manifestation of this connection can be seen on the old campus in the 1917 Grand Auditorium, a campus centerpiece premised upon Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda at the University of Virginia. In the 21^st century rush to globalize, China, too, “has pushed its universities to be more internationalized.” As Tsinghua announces intentions to build a closer relationship with the University of Oxford, it is fitting that its new library ties back to the West through the unique vision of Swiss architect Mario Botta.

“Tsinghua University Kai Feng Humanities and Social Sciences Library is Established”, Kai Feng News, http://www.kaifengfoundation.org



“The Antiquity of New: Interview with Architect Mario Botta”, Lancia Trendvisions, http://www.lanciatrendvisions.com, November 23, 2012.

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Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.