À DÉTESTER: la Bibliothèque Mitterrand

Where to start?  Well, perhaps it's best to start with libraries. I adore libraries.  As I kid, my family and I went every week to the local bibliothèque which was, if I remember correctly, housed in a smallish, modern building at the edge of pretty park.  As a university student, I found my school's library decent for books but low on atmosphere so I snuck into the rival school's library, which had comfortable leather chairs, natural light and long wooden tables lit by little brass lamps. After moving to Paris, I made it my aim to explore the city's many stunning bibliothèques, like the gorgeous Bibliothèque Mazarine, a dream of a library if there ever was one, and eventually I made my way to the biggest library in the city: la Bibliothèque Nationale de France Site François-Mitterrand, called "la Bibliothèque Mitterrand" for short.

Like many of former French president François Mitterrand's architectural "Grand Travaux" — l'Opéra Bastille, the concrete jungle of La Défense — it is a horror.  The building is so awful, so completely unsuited to everything that has to do with books and the people who love them, that it is difficult to know where to start complaining.  

I might as well begin with the physical approach to the building.  Set on the banks of the Seine in a modern, industrial section of the 13th arrondissement, an area that is so different from the rest of the city that it makes you wonder if you're still in Paris, la Bibliothèque Mitterrand is comprised of four giant glass towers set on a sunken platform, much like a table turned upside-down (architect Dominique Perrault meant the towers to resemble four open books, but to me it will always be an upended table — or the foreboding set of a Sci-Fi horror film).  The steps leading up to the building and the vast terrace that surrounds it are made of wood, a wood that is, unfortunately, very slippery when wet.  

Folly #1: Slippery Stairs = Personal Injury.  Many a reader has broken a leg or an arm on the steps of the Mitterrand Library. So many, in fact, that the wood had to be coated, post inauguration, in non-slip material that has now begun to wear off.  In spots, the stairs and the deck are still very slippery when wet.  Watch your step.

If you can make it up the stairs intact, you will probably look around for the library's entrance.  Where is it?  Walk around all four towers and you will find a door or two — locked, the handles encircled with heavy chains.  Où est l'entrée?  Look up, and all you see are monoliths of glass.  And behind the glass, brown panels that resemble the half-walls that divide the most depressing office spaces.  Now you are starting to doubt yourself: did you get the address wrong?  Are you at the famous library, or are you lost in a deserted office park? Sadly, you are in the right place.  The reason you don't see any people upstairs in those cubes is because of Folly #2.

Folly #2: The Books Are Stored in Glass Towers.  Yes, the four towers were built to house la bibliothèque's considerable collection, the architect having perhaps forgotten that books, unlike people, don't enjoy sunlight or views of Paris.  In fact, in bright light, books fade.  And so the peanut butter-colored panels were added, post-inauguration, to protect the books.

Now what?  You still don't know how to enter the building, and a stiff wind is whipping around the monoliths, slapping you in the face and making you want to leave.  Which brings me to Folly #3.  

Folly #3: The Mitterrand Wind Tunnel.  Monolithic structures create strong winds.  Especially when such structures are placed very close to one another and are just steps from a body of water — in this case, la Seine.  The wind that the Mitterrand Library creates is so strong, in fact, that it conjured up yet another folly.

Folly #4: The Tree Prison.  Trees and plants don't do well in strong wind.  Strong wind stunts their growth, and makes them fall over.  I suppose that's why, post-inauguration, the garden planner at Bibliothèque Mitterrand decided to stuff the site's 200-plus trees in cages.

Dying trees in cages = Bibliothèque Mitterrand Folly #4. 

Trees in cages?  What next?  Well, you still haven't found the entrance to the library.  Wait — there is an opening on the deck, a giant hole or cavern or . . . is it l'entrée?  Non.  It's Folly #5.

Folly #5: The Fallen Tree Pit.  Down below deck, at the base of the building, is a small garden.  A small, crowded garden of leaning pine trees.  The trees were transplanted here by someone who must not have realized that large trees have large root systems, and they need sunlight and fresh air in order to be healthy.  Not a lot of sunlight gets into the tree pit, and air does not generally circulate well below street level.  The result: post-inauguration, the trees began to fall. And that's when somebody decided to chain the trees together, in order to prop them up.

Folly #5: The Fallen Tree Pit. 

I don't want to be in one of the reading rooms when the stiff wind comes that blows the biggest tree down.  Which brings me to Folly #6.

Folly #6: The Reading Rooms Are Underground.  Now, when I want to cozy up with a great book, I want to do it in a very comfortable chair, a beam of sunlight falling on my lap.  Not underground in a chilly room under the grey light of florescent bulbs.  

Six follies, six reasons to hate the Mitterrand Library.  Still want to visit it?  If you haven't been already, you should go see it — if only to come up with more follies.  But who knows? Maybe you'll like it.  If you can figure out how to get in.

 

Comments

[Alexandre]

hahahahahahahaha!! This is so crazy...I am here today and I was just thinking about how much I hate this place. I come here often because I am a graduate student doing research, and the lack of any decent research or university libraries here in Paris is astounding.
This place is awful though...everything from the descent into the underground pit that is the reading level, to the strange mechanical arms that collect your books to the Igor-esque library workers, on top of everything you already mentioned. This place is a disaster!

[Diogenes]

The tree cages are depressing.

[Kathy_A]

First-time poster here. I found your blog when you posted about the French healthcare system, and have enjoyed reading your further adventures in Paris.

This library post is getting forwarded to my library school classmates, because your review is the first level of our group project this semester (to analyze a library's facility in terms of patron friendliness and workability).

Thanks for such an enjoyable rant, and I'm a big fan of your writing!

[parisimperfect]

Wow. Just recently I made my first foray to a Paris public library - but fortunately it was a local branch and not what sounds like this horror. My mom is a librarian so I put great stock in libraries. Get it wrong, it's all foul.

Wonderful rant. Great writing!

[Cynthia]

Aww, I guess I'm weird but I love that library and its neighborhood because there's actually enough space to breath. Plus it's a lot better than any of my dingy overcrowded wireless-free local library where homeless people like to sleep during the day ;)

[Jesse]

tree prisons lol. I'll make sure to check it out sometime soon.

[Victoria]

Another soulless, patron un-friendly library is the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. Quel horreur!

[Macushla Marie]

C'est marrant cette raillerie! Just discovered your blog via Paris(im)perfect, which I found via French Word-a-Day! So glad to see I'm not the only one who detests this behemoth biblio, as well as l'Opéra Bastille. I 1st saw la Biblio Nationale 5 yrs after it opened & I was told so proudly abt this 4 open books idea. So glad they told me, b/c I would not have known.I'm with you--upended table!Your detailing of the 6 Follies is a masterpiece. Maybe you should shop it to architecture or bus. schools as a case study in the need to know way more than "creativity" -like that trees can't be imprisoned nor books sunburnt. And how readers DO like sunlight. My first library job was in an ultra-modern, poured concrete box that was mostly underground-- airless & claustrophobic. Also given to flooding & mold, which books also dislike. [Sorry to see from Cynthia's post that the sans-abri seek sommeil in reading rooms there as here. But I don't begrudge; Shelters, like hostels, don't let lodgers stay in during the day.]

[Ron Fox]

I have been told that the area is infested with termites (yes, they eat books).

[Your Foreign Parts Correspondent]

What does that not surprise me? Folly #7: Termites!

—J.A., your Foreign Parts Correspondent

[laurent]

Very good description of what seems to be another badly planned and badly managed eyesore. One little detail: Although La Défense was completed during Mitterrand's presidency, the project had ben planned much earlier (it took about 20 years and several governments to develop and feed this lifeless monster).

[Brent]

This post reminds me of Howard Kunstler's take on urban design in post-war America:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html

[hugo]

I did an 8-month research at Tolbiac (another way of referring to the 4-glass book monster). I hated it every single day, and felt completely forlorn and abandoned in its lousy, in 2004 smoke-impregnated, eating lounges.