Transcription
The Saint-Jn VIth library, built in Paris by Henry Labrou, is a library. Above all, it is a myth: that of bringing together all the knowledge, all that has been written by all the peoples of the earth over the centuries. This myth is accompanied by a utopia: that of making this universal knowledge available to everyone.
In France, we must wait for the 19th century for access to culture to become democratized, 8 years after the popular revolution. In 1830, the government decided to build a university library in Paris, a place of education and no longer of scholarship. For the first time in the history of libraries, the new facility will not be an annex to a castle or monastery, but a building autonomous. The concept of the public library, open to all, has just been invented.
The new library will inherit the collections of the Abbaye of Saint-Jeuneviève, transformed into a high school after the revolutionary confiscations. Half a century after the priests were chased away, it's the turn of the books. We empty the cupboards and move the thousands of books by hand onto stretchers, tirelessly for several months, at a rate of around a hundred trips per day. The last stretcher was carried with a bouquet of flowers.
The architect of this new public facility is called Henri Labrou. He is one of the greatest architects of the 19th century, yet he is much less known than his contemporaries Baltard or Garnier. Fell out with the all-powerful academy of architecture, he remained for a long time a "paper architect." He does not receive his first official order until the age of 40. He had been champing at the bit for a long time. He will finally be able to use his architect's tools. This will be for the construction site of the new library.
The works lasted 8 years. The library opened its doors to the public in 1851. The new facility is built on a narrow plot, 85 m long and 21 m wide, at the top of the Saint-Jeuneviève mountain in Paris, dominated by the Pantheon. We are in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where the capital's faculties and major high schools are concentrated, but also many eateries where the students like to go and have fun. Fathers from the provinces who send their sons to study in Paris will be delighted to know that there is this new asylum that will keep their children away from estaminets and cottages.
Welcomes the headmaster of the Henri high school. This new asylum must be able to accommodate 500 students every day until 10 p.m. and contain 90,000 books. To respond to this order, the architect proposes a simple and original solution. He creates a first volume for storing old books, on which he places a second volume in the reading room, and at the back, it creates a third volume: the staircase, which does not encroach on the two others.
The plan of the library is found rational and revolutionary. It is the first time in the history of libraries that the space reserved for books has been separated, precious, of that dedicated to the reader. The reading room occupies the entire volume of the first floor, a long free plan without any partition. The ground floor is dedicated to the warehouse. Books, rigorously compartmentalized to accommodate tens of thousands of manuscripts and precious books, are stored in a dark space. They fear the light and are divided into small cells, themselves partitioned by cupboards for books. If the "bush" has compartmentalized its spaces, today, largely rebuilt, in the reading room, the volume is completely open, high and bright.
The reading room has impressive dimensions: 80 m long, 15 m high, 17 m large. Its plan is that of a hall divided into two naves by a colonnade central. With its 500 work places which wait for the students and these hundreds of usual things that cover the walls, it is the idealized image of a collective study place, open to all. In front, the decision to separate the deposit of precious books from the reading room is clearly displayed. A simple bare strip separates the functional ground floor, pierced by narrow openings, of the first floor, enhanced and widely opened by large, compact and stripped windows.
The construction of the brewery distinguishes itself from its very close neighbor, the Soufflot Pantheon. Illustrious representative of the architectural movement dominating at the time, neoclassicism, borrowing its decorative elements from Antiquity, the neoclassical movement inhabits many buildings, disguising them all as temples Greek. Breaking with this monumental and decorative tradition, Labrouse chooses the stripping down and imposing all the more its modest library in progress on the colossal Pantheon. On its facade, nothing protrudes. Yet, in his first projects, the entrance door to the center of the building was discreetly marked by a simple golden portico, but these two small columns and their entablature. It was still too much for the architect. He has them removed, replacing them with two torches indicating the opening of the library in the evening until 10 p.m. And he went even further. From a relief element, he moved on to an element dug into the wall, pushing the door and the three steps of the porch into the masonry. Now, nothing exceeds. This single door in the center of the facade is all the more modest and discreet. Yet, it leads to a space treated like a temple: the vestibule from the entrance. Here, the monumentality has regained its rights, and columns refused in the facade have finally found a place inside. The reader has entered a temple. In the architect's view, it is the temple of knowledge.
On the ground, a marble paving pattern, simple and rigorous, geometric, the very image of reason. In this metaphorical and rational universe, a decorative element denotes. Labrouse would have liked to have a garden in front of his library. By lack of space, he simply had it painted on the walls of the entrance. The vestibule is the entire width of the library. We are surprised not to find the stairs leading to the reading room. To preserve the magnitude of this majestic entrance, the architect simply pushed the staircase to the back of the building, designed as an independent volume. It does not encroach on that of the entrance nor on that of the reading room. By thus fragmenting the spaces, Labrouse stages a journey. The reader passes through the dark cavern vestibule of ignorance, then enters the staircase where the light appears, before entering the bright room reading, a symbolic rise towards knowledge orchestrated by the architect.
The plan of the great reading room is what is called a basilica plan. It is inspired by that of the Christian basilicas, whose architecture has undergone a spectacular evolution over the centuries. Until the Middle Ages, the basilicas are covered with a framework in wood. But architects want to gain height. They build higher walls and replace the flat frames with more noble stone vaults. Under their weight, the walls of the building are moving away and threaten to collapse. In order to contain the effects of the thrust of the vaults, buttresses are then built. The walls are relieved, and openings can finally be made in them, initially narrow, then increasingly larger.
For the Saint-Jeun library VI, Labroue is inspired by this tradition by bringing a major innovation to it: he places the buttresses inside its construction, thus obtaining a facade perfectly flat exterior. Nothing now stands in the way of entry to the light. The walls no longer have a load-bearing function. Labrouse can then pierce them with more than 40 windows that bathe the reading room in an entrance light. Side, first requirement of a library program: it must be diffuse, coming from several sides to allow both reading and monitoring. Liton in a treaty of the era.
From the outside, the building projects the image of a rigorous stone fortress. But inside hides a whole other universe: that of iron architecture. A combustible iron allows to protect oneself against the worst enemy of books: fire. At the time, iron was essentially reserved for industrial and utility buildings such as train stations, market halls or bridges. But we are in a library, a so-called noble architectural program. And while it would have been customary and very easy to hide it, the architect made the surprising choice to expose it. The marriage, exhibited, of a traditional material, stone, with an industrial material, iron, astonished Labrouste's contemporaries.
The coexistence of these two materials actually structures the whole building. On the ground floor, the central colonnade, the walls and buttresses are made of stone. But on the first floor, the two materials come together. The colonnade is of stone and iron. The counterforces are made of stone. They have arches and a metal frame. The whole thing is within a wall stone. The colonnade of the reading room perfectly illustrates this simultaneous use of the two materials. On the first floor, the 18 columns that constitute it are hybrids: above a solid masonry base, launches a high and light shaft. At the bottom, conversely, in the vestibule, the heavy stone columns rise over the entire height. We are nevertheless surprised to discover fine iron arches on the ceiling connecting these massive pillars together. It is in fact the metal structure which carries the first floor. While any other architect masked it by a full ceiling, Labrouse exposes it and invites visitors who enter in the library to wonder about the architecture of the place in which they enter.
On the ground floor, the columns carry in iron that the architect had painted in wormwood to better mark their presence. On the first floor, the central column extends as if it had crossed the floor. She is singularly arrested in her elevation to be married with a cast iron barrel on which the frame rests metallic. From one floor to another, the proportions, materials are reversed. Constructive decisions are clearly displayed. The architect stages this unique union between iron and stone by playing on contrasts of their color, of their juxtaposition, of their proportion in space. And if at height, from the look, the stone bases of the columns are carved, much higher, the capitals cast iron are not left behind. The fixing bolts left visible are accompanied by very finely worked plant motifs. Although it is more than 14 m from the floor, on the vault in a cream tone to enhance the iron painted black lines underlines the curvature of the arches.
Originally, the tables were arranged along the length of the room and between the columns. Labrouse had placed book cabinets. Was there a lack of space to store the usual books, or whether he wanted to hide the stone bases of these strange hybrid columns? We will never know. Anyway, the librarians complained that, according to them, this wall of shelves cut the room in two and surveillance. In that, in 1930, this huge locker was removed, thus revealing the stone base of the columns. And in view of the success of the library, the orientation was changed tables to increase the capacity of the room. We then went from 500 to 700 places sitting.
The book constitutes the only decoration of the room. They are usual in consultation, free, symbolic expression of knowledge out of all, firmly affirmed expression by the architect. In the reading room, not a single piece of wall that is not covered with work. In this respect, the brewery does not completely renounce the traditional image of museum libraries. Between the counterforces under the windows, he places a first level of book cabinet, then a second one which is accessed by a gallery. Finally, for the usual ones who have not found any additional buffets are planned. But this formal display of books has a disadvantage: the storekeepers who classify and store the usual items are also exposed. For Labrouse, their manual activity harms the nobility of the place and disrupts concentration. Dear students, he therefore decides to hide it. Subtly at first, he hides the vertical circulation by placing bookcases in front of the stairs, thus creating small cabinets in which one can store books. In a second time, it hides horizontal circulations by piercing the buttresses, thus creating a passage interior between each cabinet, which he cleverly hides behind a long wall of books. These stairs are particularly steep and dangerous, especially if you are carrying a battery of bulky books in front of the librarians' front. The architect bowed and finally granted them four staircases at each corner of the gallery. He always regretted and was satisfied with the bare minimum for the transfer of books in storage on the ground floor up to the reading room. The storekeepers will have to make do with two small spiral staircases, so narrow that it is better not to meet a colleague there.
Labrouse has reserved the majestic central staircase for the reader. The architect insisted on drawing all the details of the room's mosaics ground, whose patterns are taken up in painting on the arches of the windows, the capitals, buttresses whose sculpted shape refers to the wooden uprights of the cupboards delivered, but also the tables, the chairs, the gas burners which have since been replaced, and even the inkwells. And he took particular care in the design of the straight wooden chairs. The very short file has the particularity of cutting the back. After a few hours, he was criticized for his studies. But more than 150 years later, his cellars are still there, and the library is full all year round with students and female students. Yet, at the opening, only men were admitted to the evening sessions. But a few years later, as an experiment and under certain conditions, the presence of foreign readers was allowed. No incidents were reported. Flirting in Polish or Russian is not within the reach of every student.
On the facade are engraved the names of the most illustrious authors and scholars of the history of humanity, 800 names chronologically recorded, from Moses until Beius, a chemist who died in 1848, year of the completion of the facade. For Labrouse, it is the very image of the library catalog: a monumental catalog published in facade. And the names of these authors are not displayed anywhere. Labrouse had them engraved on the exact reverse of the book cabinets in the reading room and thus achieves a subtle effect of mirror between the contents of the library and this encyclopedism proclaimed on the facade. At the back, the panels are strangely left empty. Was it to spare the engraver, too often fallen from the top of his ladder, or because this facade is invisible from the street, or simply to leave a place for the great names of the centuries to come? We will not know never.
At the time, the architect was much criticized for the composition of his facade: naive for some, too bold for others. Today, we salute the very great modernity of this "speaking architecture." Speaking, but with one detail: we discover between each of the windows large iron points which strangely punctuate the long stone wall. Is the internal metal structure that is exposed on the outside? The framework of the arches is stabilized by tyrants anchored in the wall, but without functional justification. These tyrants come here to pierce the facade, and their crossing of the wall is indicated by pointed bolt heads like shells. These bolts are fixed to iron washers. Sté, as if the architect was referring by this detail the image of a bolt being screwed. This subtle intention is reinforced by a motif carved in stone: three fine flowers in a corkscrew, carried by the movement of the bolt. This decorative preciousness is all the more surprising than the bolts and the delicate sculpted flowers are more than 18 m from the ground, as invisible as they are incomprehensible to the simple passing. If this detail escapes the walker, the architect perhaps sends a message to his colleagues: the imitation of antiquity has lived. Architecture must now be modern and rational. The function and the constructive decisions of a building must be boldly displayed.
The Saint-Jeuneviève library is a very important date in the history of architecture and libraries. For 150 years, the architect has never been empty. He has succeeded in his bet: on generations and generations of readers, from Michelet and Simone de Beauvoir, found the taste and pleasure of studying together there.