Description

The Diocesan Library of the Diocese of Münster was built next to the Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in the heart of Münster’s first phase of inner-city expansion in the 11th century. At that time, around 1040, Bishop Hermann I founded a convent for ladies of the nobility, which was dedicated primarily to taking care of the poor. In the 18th century, a seminary was established directly adjacent to the convent. Its library was founded with the collection of the religious community “Brethren of the Common Life” and continued to grow when the book collections of other dissolved monasteries were incorporated as part of the wave of secularisation at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1977, the library was spun off from the seminary as an independent diocesan library and a year later moved to its own building in the immediate vicinity of the Überwasserkirche. Today it is one of the largest theological libraries in Germany with more than 750,000 volumes.
At the time of the competition for a new library building and two administrative buildings on the east side, the complex consisted of a dominant four-wing orthogonal structure with buildings from the historicist period and the 1950s. On the north, west and south sides, a wall frontage effectively segregates the site from the city – creating behind it a self-contained district with its own, visibly different rules. Max Dudler reversed this self-imposed seclusion by opening up the site with new pathways and vistas that relate its urban space directly to the buildings. Nevertheless, the island-like essence of the Diözesaninsel is still evident from the existing buildings and the interventions strengthen the unique character of the site.
From Überwasserkirchplatz, a cobblestone alleyway with a powerful central perspective that recalls de Chirico leads northwards between the library block and the seminary, while another leads eastwards between the buttresses of the church and the colonnade of the newly created cloister. The outdoor spaces that arise between the orthogonal arrangement of the new buildings and the site boundary were planted as flowerbeds.
The new building for the diocesan library is precisely articulated with good quality materials, workmanship and transitions between materials, both inside and out. The façades with their repeating pattern of windows and pillars have an abstract quality that is heightened by their identical reveal depths and concealed window frames giving it the impression of having been fashioned of a single material with no traces of workmanship.
The module on which these elevations are based is derived from the dimensions of a bookshelf. As such, a container for books – the library – became the generative element for its appearance. The most important room within the building is the three-storey tall reading room located on the first floor, which is particularly striking after arriving in the low entrance hall. The collections are arranged behind walls with oak panelling, which define the atmosphere of the entire interior. The Santini Room on the ground floor, the library’s treasure trove so to speak, houses the eponymous collection of sacred music from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Originally published in Bauwelt  08.2006, pp. 10-17, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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