Architecture for Reading in Public

An in-depth look at the iconic mid-nineteenth-century building and its construction during a period of revolution and its transformative impact on the history of architecture.

Since its completion in 1850, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève has been heralded as a major forerunner of modern architecture. The architect Henri Labrouste, a product of the École des Beaux-Arts, broke with the reigning neoclassical tradition by expressing on the exterior the building's internal functions and exposing on the interior the unprecedented iron construction of its reading room. Underlying these radical departures from tradition was a new democratic form of spatial organisation appropriate to the new reading public.

Acclaimed architectural historian Neil Levine presents both a building history—discussing the significance of the programme, site, prehistory, and building process—and a window into a period of momentous historical change by contextualising Labrouste's work within the revolutionary times of the latter part of the July Monarchy and Second Republic in France. He examines how the building communicates a public purpose through its anticlassical, non-hierarchic, egalitarian form and reveals how the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève is the product of a poetic architectural intelligence mixed with radical, democratic ideals.

Architecture for Reading in Public by Neil Levine is an essential read for those interested in architectural history and the intersections between architecture and societal change.