The Tianjin Binhai New Area Library, nicknamed The Eye, is part of the Binhai Cultural Center. The Rotterdam firm MVRDV designed it with the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute. The article names no client or style. The project went from preliminary drawings to opening in three years, and the library opened in October 2017.
The five-level building has 363,000 square feet (33,700 m²) of space. Terraced bookshelves can hold 1.2 million books. A luminous central sphere serves as an auditorium for 110 people and is visible from the park through an eye-shaped opening. The upper floors hold computer rooms, meeting rooms, offices and two rooftop patios.
About 10,000 people a day visited in the first week, causing queues. The main atrium cannot hold books, because the rooms that would give access to the upper shelving were never built, and book spines were printed on the shelf backs for the opening photographs.
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