Designs for a new Baghdad library boasting the largest single-space reading room in the world have taken a step closer to being realised after the architects got the green light to put the project out to tender in September.
The Iraq National Library was devastated by fire and looting when allied troops entered the city in 2003. An estimated 60% of archival materials – including records of the Ba'athist regime – and 25% of books, newspapers, rare books, historical photographs and maps were destroyed. Construction of the new 45,000 sq m library building is expected to be completed within three years.
Amir Mousawi, director of London-based AMBS Architects, said: "Iraq has a great heritage for libraries, but currently there is no outlet for knowledge there. There was an educated population, but everybody left during the Saddam [Hussein] years, so there is a vacuum of knowledge. The war or occupation, or whatever you want to call it, has done a lot of damage to the knowledge infrastructure, so it's important to everyone that the library project materialises. Iraq desperately needs it."
The six-storey library will house 2.8m books and accommodate 5,060 visitors.
Building in Baghdad is "not easy", Mousawi said, with projects dogged by security concerns, inadequate infrastructure for basic amenities such as electricity and water, and a dearth of skilled labour and building supplies.
"Combined with 60 degree heat in the summer and 30 years of suppression, Iraq is seriously deprived in many, many things," he said. "There is a young government, not experienced in delivering sophisticated projects. Everything is political: you can find that everyone is pulling in different directions. But even if the projects can't be as perfect as we'd like, it's important to build."
The library, which will take the shape of a drop-like peninsular projecting into a lake, has a double curvature roof structure formed of two-way steel-cable net, covering the huge reading space, with an arrangement of skylights to maintain constant levels of light.
Planners hope it will be the focus of a youth-centred rebirth of Iraqi culture. The library forms part of a planned 1.2 million sq m development dubbed "Youth City", comprising 30 new buildings grouped into cultural, ministries and residential zones. A prospective programme for the library includes exhibitions of established and diaspora Iraqi artists, as well as talks, lectures, seminars and short courses.
Saad Eskander, director of the Iraq National Library and Archive (INLA), who studied at the London School of Economics before returning to Baghdad, his birthplace, in 2003, said: "New libraries have a notable role to play in consolidating Iraq's young democracy by promoting unconditional access to information, freedom of expression, cultural diversity and transparency."
Eskander, who has steered INLA since 2003, is involved in plans for a new digital-archive building, not for use by the general public, in a separate project.
