You: Lich

Qatar National Library by OMA 

 The Library by Rem Koolhaas

The physical impact of books has been important in terms of my entire formation. The first books that fascinated me were the fairy tales of Grim illustrated by Gustave Doré. I still remember the physical nature of those books as one of the strongest memories of my entire life. In the 1950s I would spend time in the library of the Stedelijk Museum – almost like in a living room. My first intersection of writing and architecture was Delirious New York, which I wrote in the New York Public Library, going through microfilms, old newspapers, and books. I made one particular seat my own, almost day and night.

One similarity between architecture and bookmaking is that both have unbelievably long traditions but are also forced to be of the moment, constantly updating in order to survive. We have designed many libraries and built a few. Libraries, as a typology, are so exceptionally suitable to produce radical architecture. Apparently, there is a paradox that such a traditional form produces inventive solutions, and that is the case for the Qatar National Library. The building is 138 meters long, equivalent to the length of two 747s. This is not to boast about scale but because from the beginning the idea was to make reading as accessible and as stimulating as possible to the population of Qatar as a whole. We thought we could achieve that by creating a building that was almost a single room, not divided in different sections, certainly not into separate floors.

We took a plate and folded its corners up to create terraces for the books, but also to enable access in the center of the room. You emerge immediately surrounded by literally every book – all physically present, visible, and accessible, without any particular effort. The library is a space that could contain an entire population, and also an entire population of books…

sumer is the earliest known civilization that had to do it to us

The Fly (1958) is a very good and intelligent movie. Its characters are realistic and it’s an engaging and thought-provoking story (and the practical effects are good). [I’m going to spoil it now, but i really do recommend you watch it yourself.]

I take issue with the doctor’s reaction to his test results- not in how it was written, but with the man himself, fictional as he is. His motivations are not incomprehensible, and he’s not really in his right mind towards the end- I can even comprehend (though I wouldn’t do the same) wanting to destroy oneself rather than lose all agency. Having another conciousness take over your body is frightening (though I do think an imperfect solution could’ve been found with help). But the burned notes are a scarcely-addressed tragedy. The destroyed lab equipment, a nearly perfect teleporter, gone, seems to be the Fly’s doing, assuming the audience can judge this based on which arm acts. That is a great tragedy, but Doctor Delambre seems to be in control again when he burns his notes and his reasoning behind it is chaos! As if destroying his work would prevent the same thing from happening to a future scientist! He didn’t need anyone else’s input to make that mistake, so why should the next person need his? If he had the good sense to leave his research intact, it could be learned from, because that’s how science is supposed to work! You can’t publish results you know are wrong, and you can’t withhold results because they’re not the ones you wanted! What I’m saying is Andre singlehandedly (pun intended) deprived his world of teleportation technology because he had an accident. What a brilliant moron.

creativelibra: Is the feeling of love really just a chemical reaction in your head?

When your hair is wavy/curly sometimes there is a fine line between “messy romantic waves” and “evil witch who lives in the woods.”

What is America’s obsession with Bill Nye the Science Guy I once said in class that I had never seen it and this girl yelled YOU’VE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE and in 5 seconds flat half the class was screaming HOW COULD YOU HAVE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE while the other half chanted BILL BILL BILL BILL

honestly people can be so irritating about my collections. “why would you want that, it’s gross.” “why would you keep that, it’s toxic.” “why would you imprison that, it could kill everyone within a mile of here if it escaped.” ugh...

Dig into an Incredible Compendium of Objects Excavated from the Bottom of Amsterdam’s Amstel River

Lioconcha Hieroglyphica is officially my favorite mollusc

The Languages of Iran

Just by looking at this map of Iran’s spoken languages, you can tell it has a long history of immigrations, migrations, and conquests. Pretty neat!