Urban Hacktivist Launches Street Library
Strasbourg-based street artist Florian Rivière is back with a new, neat urban intervention! Last weekend, Rivière installed a little library on a sidewalk near Gare du Nord in Paris.
The only ingredients Rivière used for his intervention are a tree cage and a wooden crate. Again, the urban hacktivist shows that tweaking an urban situation doesn’t require huge investments — it’s just about the idea. Be sure to check out Rivière’s website for more nice interventions!
The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries
“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” -Ray Bradbury
For centuries, books have housed the collective knowledge of the world and formed the foundations of educational institutions. Given that these objects that contain such value, it only makes sense that throughout history people have constructed beautiful buildings to house them.
We put together a list of some of the most beautiful libraries as captured by Instagrammers around the world. For more photos from these architectural wonders, check out their linked location pages below.
- Stuttgart City Library, Stuttgart, Germany
- Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland
- Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
- Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, Rio de Janiero, Brazil
- The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
- George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
- Kanazawa Umimirai Library, Kanazawa City, Japan
- New York Public Library, New York City, NY
Instagram is talking my language today.
The Book Barge, a floating bookshop on a canal boat, roams the UK waterways at a very low speed for a reason. Owner Sarah Henshaw, inspired in part by the slow food movement, explains:
“[…] we hope to promote a less hurried and harried lifestyle of idle pleasures, cups of tea, conversation, culture and, of course, curling up with an incomparably good Book Barge purchase… I hoped that by creating a unique retail space, customers would realise how independent bookshops can offer a far more pleasurable shopping experience than they’re likely to find online or on the discount shelves at supermarkets.”
Since keeping quite small and at the same time convinced that great books should be read and shared with others, Sarah makes sure she reads almost all titles displayed at The Book Barge, which in most cases are an alternative to the bestselling lists promoted by the high street bookstores.
As the famous closing line of The Great Gatsby goes:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
This beautiful fresco adorns the exterior of the La Bibliotèque De La Cité (Library of the City) in Lyon, France.
