对一些批评人士来说，图书馆带有政治色彩，混淆了它的建筑信息，最糟糕的是，它是一座政治姿态的纪念碑，其功用和概念完整性只是次要的问题。尽管对该项目的严格审查需要它的政治和社会历史背景化，但该建筑的建筑-挪威公司Sn hetta提交的获奖设计-值得作为一个自主目标和当代图书馆设计的先例予以欣赏和评估。

To some critics, the library has political overtones that obfuscate its architectural message, at worst acting as a monument to political posturing whose utility and conceptual integrity is only of secondary concern. And while critical scrutiny of the project necessitates its political and socio-historical contextualization, the building's architecture—the competition-winning design submitted by Norwegian firm Snøhetta—is worth appreciating and evaluating as an autonomous object and as a precedent for contemporary library design.

 Courtesy of Snøhetta

Sn hetta提供

从海岸线上看，图书馆呈圆盘状，直径为160米，呈楔形向水面倾斜。建筑师们打算将圆形规划的纯几何学“回忆起知识的周期性，流淌的时间”，并反映亚历山大港的圆形布局。[1]虽然这种粗俗的描述从字面上看是相当似是而非的，但这一提法表明了对一种永恒的、普遍的、也许是原型的形式的真正吸引力，它的纯洁性既具有唤起性，又具有挑衅性。在这个过程中，它成功了；在它庞大的规模和它引人注目的、干净的形象之间，图书馆在这个港口城市上展现了一种威严的、原始的存在。

From the shoreline, the library appears as a disc-shaped volume one hundred-sixty meters in diameter, tilted forward toward the water in the shape of a wedge. The architects intended the pure geometry of the circular plan to "recall the cyclical nature of knowledge, fluid throughout time" and to reflect the circular layout of the Alexandrian harbor. [1] Although this blithe description is fairly specious taken literally, the reference suggests a genuine appeal to a timeless, universal, and perhaps archetypal form, both evocative and provocative in its purity. And in this it succeeds; between its massive size and its striking, clean profile, the Library exerts a commanding, primeval presence over the harbor city.

 Aerial views reveal the simplicity of the library's formal concept. Image Courtesy of Snøhetta

鸟瞰显示了图书馆形式概念的简单性。Sn hetta的形象礼貌

航空照片和在体验之间的区别对于图书馆的可理解性是至关重要的：从图像和模型中可以看到的是一个整体的、块状的图表，而不是地面平面给人的印象。复杂性是通过结构和材料的细节，切割成圆形，和一个精心设计的内部程序，勾勒出屋顶的戏剧性倾斜，在人类的尺度上作出贡献。多方向曲线和相交面的相互作用给图书馆带来了一种能量动力，特别是从外部的角度。在这个建筑往往打算通过渲染来表达自己的时代，“书目”为亚历山大提供了可喜的慰藉：一个图书馆，旨在通过实物占领而不是通过模拟来消费(尽管这可能仅仅是对一座建筑的慷慨解读，其概念在任何其他媒体中都是笨拙的)。

The difference between aerial photographs and the in-vivo experience is essential to the comprehensibility of the library: what may appear from images and models to be a monolithic, blocky diagram is far from the in-person impression afforded from the ground plane. Complexity is contributed at the human scale through structural and material details, incisions into the circular shape, and an elaborate interior program contoured to the dramatic incline of the roof. The interplay of multi-directional curves and intersecting planes gives the library an energetic dynamism, particularly from the exterior approach. In an age in which buildings are too often intended to express themselves best through renderings, the Bibliotheca provides Alexandria with welcome relief: a library designed for consumption through physical occupation rather than through simulacra (although the possibility exists that this is a merely generous reading of a building whose concept is simply clumsy in any other medium).

 Courtesy of Snøhetta

Sn hetta提供

精心设计的地面景观构成了Sn hetta设计的巨大成功之一。围绕着外部，一个宽阔的开放广场和一个反射池缓冲器-图书馆远离了城市亚历山大的混乱环境，为它提供了一幅富有戏剧性和宽容的画布，它的不寻常形式可以在其中显现出来。在水池所创造的地下水位下，整个图书馆的藏书似乎是在地球表面上旋转，这一效果被花岗岩覆盖的墙壁的倾斜坡度所强调。在南面，这个整体的、弯曲的轮廓在广场上方32米的高度上急剧上升，没有向它后面的城市展示任何建筑物的整体形态。作为对历史和传统的敬意，这座墙用现代和已灭绝的语言雕刻了一系列文字，暗示着图书馆的世俗化。虽然这些象征性的符号在视觉上很有娱乐性，而且执行得很漂亮，但它们听起来有些空洞，似乎真正的文化唤起在一个更基本或更概念化的层面上的困难，让位于一种试图传达图书馆功能的文字主义和肤浅的尝试。

The carefully choreographed groundscape constitutes one of the great successes of Snøhetta’s design. Around the exterior, an expansive open plaza and a reflecting pool buffer the library from the chaotic environment of urban Alexandria and provide it with a dramatic and forgiving canvas from which its unusual form can emerge. Dipping below the water table created by the pool, the entire library volume seems to pivot atop the surface of the Earth, an effect emphasized by the angled gradient of the granite-clad walls. On the southern side, this monolithic, curved profile dramatically soars thirty-two meters above the plaza without revealing anything of the building’s overall form to the city behind it. As an homage to history and tradition, this wall is carved with a series of texts in languages both modern and extinct, alluding to the library’s worldliness. Although these token bits of symbolism are visually entertaining and beautifully executed, they ring somewhat hollow, as if the difficulty of genuine cultural evocation on a more fundamental or conceptual level gave way to a literalist and superficial attempt to convey the library’s function.

 Carvings in the granite allude to the library's ancient heritage. Image Courtesy of Bibliotheca Alexandrina

花岗岩中的雕刻暗示着图书馆的古老遗产。亚历山大图书馆的形象礼貌

在里面，就在倾斜的水晶天篷之下，伟大的阅览室-图书馆的皇冠宝石-将设计的大小和壮丽带入了一个单一的视野。七层堆积如山的平台，让人想起哈佛大学的冈德大厅(Gund Hall)的托盘，彼此重叠，形成了一片无休止的斜向矢量空间，足够容纳大约两千名游客。高耸的柱子将天花板高高举起，让人想起拉布鲁斯特的“国家图书馆”和赖特的“约翰逊蜡像馆”。也许仅仅在这个壮观的竞技场上，这座建筑就像一个图书馆，在功能和系谱上都与建筑传统中确立的类型学模式紧密相连。

Inside, just below the sloping crystalline canopy, the great reading room—the crown jewel of the library—brings the size and magnificence of the design into a single view. Seven stacked tiers of platforms, reminiscent of the trays of Harvard’s Gund Hall, overlap one another in an unending expanse of diagonally vectored space, large enough to house some two thousand visitors. Soaring columns lift the ceiling high into the air, recalling the dramatic, flaring supports of Labrouste’s Bibliotheque Nacionale and Wright’s Johnson Wax Building. Perhaps in this spectacular arena alone, the building is truly recognizable as a library, functionally and genealogically tied to a typological model well established in architectural tradition.

 Programmatic fragmentation results in the creation of intimately scaled spaces for individual use. Image Courtesy of Snøhetta

编程碎片化的结果是创建了适合个人使用的密切缩放的空间。Sn hetta的形象礼貌

正是在这个阅览室里，建筑最能美化学术和博学的行为。沐浴在漫射的北方阳光透过屋顶，温暖的天然木材完成和交错的地板安排创造了令人兴奋的光阴的空间时刻，跨越亲密和巨大的平衡。丰富的质感墙完成，细致的结构连接，和一个创新的天窗系统与雕塑的乐趣窗口序列打破了巨大的空间进一步成为一个微妙的相互作用的细节，在一个明显的人类规模。

It is in this reading room, too, that the architecture most glorifies the acts of scholarship and erudition. Basking in diffuse northern sunlight pouring through the roof, the warmth of the natural wood finishes and the staggered floor arrangement create thrilling Bachelardian moments of space that straddle the diametrics of the intimate and the immense. Richly textured wall finishes, meticulous structural articulations, and an innovative skylight system with the sculptural playfulness of a Miralles window sequence break down the enormous space further into a delicate interplay of details on an appreciably human scale.

 Elegant north-facing skylights block direct sunlight from entering the reading room. Image Courtesy of Snøhetta

优雅的北面天窗阻挡阳光直射进入阅览室。Sn hetta的形象礼貌

书籍和手稿储存库能够容纳800多万册，整齐地占据了阅览室下面的空间。室内计划的其他元素，包括关于埃及政治过去和现在的永久展览，艺术画廊，天文馆和信息科学学校完成了精心设计和给游客留下深刻印象的演讲。图书馆的十一层楼高四十三米，建筑面积达八万平方米，是非洲地区最大的图书馆之一。

Book and manuscript repositories, capable of housing over eight million volumes, neatly occupy the spaces below the reading room. Other elements of the interior program, including permanent exhibits on Egyptian politics past and present, art galleries, a planetarium, and a school for information sciences complete a well-choreographed and impressive presentation to visitors. The library’s eleven floors, with an overall height of forty-three meters, create an astounding 80,000 square meters of floor space—one of the largest libraries in Africa by area.

 Elevation and section drawings

高程和剖面图

当然，其他地方使用的图书馆规模标准-藏书容量-揭示了藏书起源的政治问题。最终的建筑价格将近2亿美元，使得图书馆的藏书资金很少，尽管法国政府在2010年赠送了50万本法语书，但在可预见的未来，这座建筑仍将严重运转。[2]由于缺乏建设后的考虑，把这座建筑描述为一个不受欢迎的政府的虚荣心工程，一个国际姿态的工具，以及在国内展示虚假繁荣而无视实际效用的说法。当然，这种可能性让人们担心，在一个贫穷率和粮食无保障率极高(以及最近的其他危机)严重的国家，一个庞大而奢华的公民项目的财政责任，尽管建筑和基础设施投资的好处这一更大的问题还面临着另一场规模更大的辩论。

Of course, the standard metric of library size used elsewhere—collection capacity—reveals problems with the politics of the Bibliotheca’s origins. The final construction price tag of nearly $200 million left little funding for the library’s collections, and despite a sizable gift of a half-million Francophone books from the French government in 2010, the building will operate severely under capacity for the foreseeable future. [2] The lack of post-construction consideration presents a conflicting narrative of the building as the vanity project of an unpopular government, a vehicle of international posturing and a domestic display of false prosperity undertaken with disregard for real utility. And of course, this possibility raises concerns about the fiscal responsibility of a massive, luxurious civic project in a country with troublingly high rates of poverty and food insecurity (among other more recent crises), though the larger question of the merits of architectural and infrastructural investment are subject to another, larger debate.

 Courtesy of Snøhetta

Sn hetta提供

图书馆提出的更直接的问题涉及建筑理论和意向性问题。至于建筑师，他们的灵感和口头见证是否会影响我们对成品的解读？资助该项目的政府的议程是否应该改变我们对其成功的理解？或者，图书馆的架构是否能够被独立和自主地欣赏，研究它的创新和奇迹，并免除对过程和优先顺序的错误决策的责任？这样的解读将有利于这一特定项目，该项目的建筑优点值得赞扬，但由于将其置于政治游戏的背景下，它将蒙上阴影。

The more immediate questions posed by the library engage architectural theory with questions of intentionality. As concerns the architects, should their inspirations and spoken testimony affect our reading of the finished product? Should the agendas of the government that financed the project alter our understanding of its success? Or can the library’s architecture be appreciated independently and autonomously, studied for its innovations and wonders, and absolved of accountability for erroneous decisions of process and priority? Such a reading would act to the benefit of this particular project, whose architectural merits deserve commendation but stand to be overshadowed by placing it within the context of a political game.

 Courtesy of Snøhetta

Sn hetta提供

[1]Sn hetta。“亚历山大图书馆”2015年1月23日检索，网址：http：/nohetta.com/project/5-书目-Alexandrina。

[1] Snøhetta. "Bibliotheca Alexandrina." Retrieved 23 January 2015 from http://snohetta.com/project/5-bibliotheca-alexandrina.

[2]O‘Neal，Jeff。“亚历山大图书馆：亚历山大图书馆重生？”布克赖特。2015年1月23日检索：http：/bookriot.com/2013/03/27/书目-Alexandrina-亚历山大-再生图书馆。

[2] O'Neal, Jeff. "Bibliotheca Alexandrina: The Great Library of Alexandria Reborn?" Bookriot. Retrieved 23 January 2015 from http://bookriot.com/2013/03/27/bibliotheca-alexandrina-the-great-library-of-alexandria-reborn/.

建筑师Sn hetta面积0.0平方米项目年2001

Architects Snøhetta Area 0.0 sqm Project Year 2001