Library Buildings around the World

The best plan that gave the team of Vicente Fox to realize the slogan "make Mexico a country of readers," was launched when the
former President signed on April 23, 2003, as part of World Paper, a deal that brought together six federal agencies to build a
"modern library, which together architectural advances, technological and librarians", which would be only the "central unifying
principle" on which they would establish a network of information and reading. Opponents of the construction of the Mega José
Vasconcelos Library of Mexico Siglo XXI, argued that to attract people to read was to create a distribution system and efficient
dissemination of books and not consummate a work that was described as Pharaonic and white elephant . Anyway, on May 16, 2006
opened the doors of the most important cultural project of the Fox administration. But it was during the early months of President
Felipe Calderon when he fell on a controversial structural megalibraries and use that has not finished yet. In March 2007, the PRD
federal deputy, Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real, denounced the use the Mega Library was assigned to the company Film & Tape Free
Agent, for its facilities in a fashion show and taking pictures spring-summer catalog of El Palacio de Hierro. In its complaint
accompanied with 15 images from that catalog, which earned him the waiver from the Director General of Libraries of Conaculta,
Saul Juarez. Then, two months after his appointment as director of the Mega Library, Ignacio Padilla faced complaints from users
who told of leaks, staves erected by the rains, bathrooms and elevators were not working and an auditorium flooded, was so that just
10 months after his inauguration in January 2007, it was decided to close the campus indefinitely and inject another 23 billion
dollars to address the weaknesses. Ignacio Padilla resigned on 16 August of that year. Nearly two years after Vicente Fox presented
to the Mexican-inspired building in the country of readers who wanted to drive, the Mega Library of Mexico "José Vasconcelos"
reopened on November 30, 2008, with 10 hours of the morning 20 pm, Monday through Friday. The first day of February of this
year, Sergio Vela appointed Fernando Alvarez del Castillo as the second director in the history of the Library "José Vasconcelos".
The megalibraries occupies 40 thousand square meters next to the former Buenavista railroad station, today's final whereabouts
Suburban Train. Outside there is a botanical garden, which contains almost 60 000 specimens of 168 species of trees, shrubs and
herbaceous. Designed by architect Alberto Kalach, the megalibraries intends to return, in the words of its creator, "the concept of
the ark, home to the human knowledge." From that idea, proposed the creation of a building that can accommodate oblique up to
two million books and a roof protects the skeleton of a whale, a piece made by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco expressly for the site.
Its collection consists of public and private funds. It has a computer room equipped with $ 30 million donated by the Bill Gates
Foundation and the network "Prometheus Winner", developed by the University of Colima, that will help the technical processing
and control of the body of the National Network Public Libraries (RNBP). Funding from the Biblioteca José Vasconcelos Siglo XXI,
which amounted to just over one billion dollars, was divided equally between the federal government's fiscal resources and the
revenue from the patronage that led Bernardo Dominguez, Francisco Barrio financial sponsor. Since the opening of the
megalibraries, for 32 months, has been open to the public for just 11. It is estimated that in fullness of operation, the megalibraries
serve 4 million visitors a year. (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx)
Vasconcelos Library is located at the Hip Street or Area 1 North, between North and Aldama Insurgentes, Colonia Buenavista from
the central Cuauhtemoc Mexico City, Distrito Federal. The main entrance to the exhibition gives an esplanade that connects with the
former Buenavista railroad station, so it is not surprising that dipped in the last rail of the urban environment where they erected,
the building resembles a gigantic train car. One of the best ways to get to the library is by means of public transport, either
Metrobus, as it is a few steps from Insurgentes Avenue, or Metro, as it is located opposite the station and the terminal Buenavista
line B, Buenavista-Pantitlán and very near the station on line 3 Guerrero, University-Indios Verdes. The location is fortunate,
because in a radius of 15 miles are located ten Sixteen delegations of Mexico City and eight neighboring municipalities of Mexico
State, which is a geographical network which concentrate about 14 million people, three of them in an area of 5 miles. Also in this
area is planned to develop a communications and transportation complex, which will be rehabilitated to the former railway station
and commuter rail terminal in Mexico City that will connect, in a first stage, Buenavista in Cuautitlan and Huehuetoca
subsequently, in the northern state of Mexico. For the construction of the new cultural precinct, the Ministry of Education in
conjunction with the National Council for Culture and the Arts was designated as the entities responsible for implementation and
operational coordination of the project, for which it was determined that they were basically supported The following bodies: an
advisory committee composed of scholars, practitioners and experts in various fields, a Board responsible for fundraising and
donations for the construction and equipping of the building, as additional means for the fiscal resources to do so, a public trust
management to ensure smooth implementation, transparent and efficient, in addition to the Technical Committee responsible for the
channeling of resources and project supervision. After approval of the operational structure of the project, a first step was the
establishment on 18 March 2003, the Advisory Committee, which considered the participation of representatives of major
institutions specializing in the field of library , architecture, and technology. This Committee was careful to give a very particular
weight to library science sector, with the representation of the main professional and research bodies like the National Association of
Librarians, the National School of Library and Archive, the University Library Research Center, College of Library of the UNAM
and the Bibliographic Research Institute through the National Library. In early May 2003, we published the notice of the
International Architecture Competition to select the proposal for the execution of the Project Executive. For the development of the
competition was formed in addition to an organizing committee, a technical committee for the implementation of competition, and
was also a tender advice. The contest took place in two stages. The first was a presentation by participants of a conceptual
framework consisting of a sketch of the library. The proposals were evaluated by an international jury was composed in its various
stages by the Mexican Carlos Mijares (architect), Ricardo Rodriguez (architect), Daniel Ruiz (Civil Engineer), Jorge Gamboa de
Buen (architect) and Jorge von Ziegler (writer and Director General of Conaculta Library), as well as foreign architects Shigeru
Ban, from Japan, Aaron Betsky, the United States, Tod Williams, U.S.; Peter Rowe, U.S., Mark Robbins, United States, and Luis
Fernandez-Galiano, Spain. Statements were also made: Mr. Reed Kroloff, as a consultant, Robert Rohlf as a consultant in libraries,
and as coordinator of the Technical Committee the architect Ernesto Alva Martinez. The competition involved 592 proposals, of
which 459 were for Mexican architects and 133 foreign architects from 31 different countries. Among the most prominent are
counted by Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield, Eric Owen Moss and bright offices worldwide. This phase ended with
the selection of the top seven proposals submitted by Josep Lluis Mateo (Spain) Team Mazanti Broid + Bonilla + (Mexico-Colombia),
David Chipperfield (UK), Hector Vigliecca (Brazil), Juan Carlos Tello (Mexico), Alberto Kalach (Mexico) and Eric Owen Moss
(USA). For the second stage, the finalists produced a bill that was introduced to a different jury, but made with the same criteria
above. For selection of the winning project, the jury evaluated the seven drafts submitted to the final stage of the competition. The
process was first on the presentation and explanation from each of their respective pre-finalists, then the experts in library and
structures that made the observations considered relevant, then held a series of votes that each juror said that in his opinion the
project was likely to be elected. In this way we selected the winner of the seven pre-projects, which proved to be the one conducted
by the Mexican Alberto Kalach with a team of Juan Palomar, Tonatiuh Martinez and Gustavo Lipkau, who outlined a linear
building with a symmetrical section in which privileges the central space, botanical garden, in addition to the apparent solidity of
their walls slightly inclined, with a single structural frame that can be repeated modular. It was also felt that the winning project is
an integrative proposal that allows a balanced partnership of cultural space with natural space within a symbiosis Library /
Botanical Garden. The winning team is composed by Alberto Kalach who has been particularly interested in the union of
architecture with the landscape and nature. Among his most notable projects is Mexico City Future: The City of Lakes, has taught at
several universities in Mexico and the United States, the architect and essayist Juan Palomar who imbued his work has developed
3