ing rigorous research into its design methodology.
Over three decades, OMA tackled the question of
the library through four projects, each providing
a different answer to two pressing questions: the
survival of the book following the complete digiti-
zation of life, and the potential for public space to
act as a platform for civic gathering and intellectual
exchange. Within this ideological ambition, the book
and its storage are no longer the central concern, but
just one of a suite of media formats whose content
is curated within the city library. Since knowledge is
everywhere, the urban library is where words, both
written and spoken, become ideas. »The Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville is
the third in a series of libraries designed by
Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm since 1989.De
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FRAME LAB 157