Iva Resetar
Literature Museum in Mainz
The Museum of Literature is located in Mainz, the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg, and envisaged as a new nodal centre of a large network of libraries in the Rhein-Main region. The museum is at one and the same time a celebration of books in their traditional form, the most important form of cultural dissemination in our society, and an interface between this form of information and new information technology.
This synthesis of traditional and new forms of information is in part realised through the network of libraries in the region. The museum houses a permanent exhibit about the tradition and technology of book culture. In addition, the Museum of Literature introduces new, portable reading devices based on digital technology. These devices are made as soft screens and handle as paper. Any digitised book or other piece of literary or image information can be downloaded onto the device. The device can be checked out in the library against a deposit and serve the visitors in the museum for the enjoyment of reading. The Museum of Literature is thus taking the idea of book culture into the new era where technology and leisure coexist in an environment where the focus is on the experiential aspects related to reading.
The Museum of Literature creates a new definition of a museum in terms of the relation between the visitor, the exhibits and the social space for reading that it offers. It brings together various forms of reading culture that exist in present day society. It plays on the tension between reading as a personal and intimate activity and public landscape that the architecture sets out in its interior.
The proposal is located on the Zoll- und Binenhafen area of Mainz. The site is a small portside location ear-marked by the city for urban scale rejuvenation. Located close to the point of confluence of the Rhine and Main, the site holds a symbolic value. The proposal activates the riverfront by bringing a vital cultural institution to the site and juxtaposing public and intimate spaces with one another.
The design of the museum is based on the study of laser-sintered textile systems consisting of interconnected quatrefoils. These were used as a system that can alternate between open and closed organisations and used to systematise the building programme. For example, the opening and closing of the system is used to control the organisation of open public and intimate private reading spaces. The system is also used to generate open vistas to the city and the riverside.
The building is defined by a series of twisted surfaces that organise a variation of soft and hard landscaped zones. This creates permeability in the building so that visitors have constant contact with the outside. The building is constructed from reinforced concrete and the spaces articulated with materials that render the soft and hard landscape.