View - library in Alexandria, Egypt/train stations in France

Architectural Review, The, August, 2001

THE GREAT LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, IN EGYPT, AN ACT OF FAITH BY THE GOVERNMENT, ARCHITECTS AND BUILDERS ALIKE, IS TO OPEN SOON. THE NEW LINK IN FRANCE'S TGV SYSTEM SHRINKS EUROPE. RENZO PIANO, KING OF THE WEBSITES. SEIDLER TOO BIG IN SYDNEY? CAIRO SLOWLY LEARNS TO LIVE WITH ITS CLIMATE.

THE GREAT LIBRARY

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina has just been handed over by the builder, and will be formally opened in April next year. Government, clients, builders and the architects have generated a most heroic building that celebrates scholarship, history, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The library promises to reinvigorate the city and its culture.

When the results of the competition for the great library of Alexandria were announced in 1989, a few taxis turned up for the ceremony and a dishevelled cosmopolitan circus of young men and women clambered out to be asked 'Where are the architects?'. 'We are', they replied.

From the start, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was an extraordinary project. In 1974, Mahdouh Lofti Diowar, president of the city's university, had the ideal of reviving the almost mythical great library, powerhouse of Hellenic scholarship. The vision was embraced by the Egyptian government, and enough funds were gathered to launch the international competition, which received 524 valid submissions - perhaps the largest entry ever.

It was won by a group of young architects who came together in Los Angeles. Two had met in Frank Israel's office: the American Craig Dykers and Austrian Christoph Kapeller. They decided to set up a team and were joined by Kjetil Thorsen, a Norwegian who had studied with Kapeller in Graz under people like Gunther Domenig. Thorsen brought other Norwegian colleagues with whom he had set up Snohetta (Snow Hut), [1] a small practice in Oslo, Weeks of intensive work in rooms hired cheaply from an old person s home resulted in a design of extraordinary power which practically jumped off the competition drawings.

A huge disc appeared to be rising from the south over the Mediterranean. It smiled on the city's harbour, which is guarded by the castle made of the remains of the Pharos, the unbelievably tall lighthouse that was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Enthusiastic supporters of Snohetta's scheme likened its figure to that of the Sun God Ra. The architects were rather surprised at the analogy, but were happy to accept it, because it became a powerful part of the world-wide publicity campaign to generate construction funds.

Amazingly, and with great dedication, the government of the poor country pursued the ideal. Mme Mubarak, the wife of the president, became the chairwoman of trustees. About US $220 million had to be raised. There was an immediate response from Arab countries. The remainder was found by the Egyptians, with a little advice from UNESCO. Some Western states provided help in particular ways, for instance training for librarians and for making particular elements of the project.

Problems of funding and bureaucracy were immense, but they have been overcome. Now the building is finished (though not yet occupied by its books - it will have a soft opening in October). It is a triumph of idealism and grit. After the initial shock of meeting the young designers, the Egyptian authorities clenched their teeth, and allowed Snohetta to get on with the job, without demanding a more experienced partner (as happens so often when young architects win competitions). Snohetta chose the Egyptian firm Hamza Associates with whom to set up a joint venture project. Mamdouh Hamza solved the problems of stabilizing the huge building (necessarily by its section heavily loaded to the back) preventing it from rotating in the soft watery shales of the Nile delta. His firm took over all engineering aspects of the work and became local collaborators with the architects.

For a long time, many of us in the West thought that the project had failed. A very poor country, an idealistic project, an undefined financing system, international political complications, untried architects all looked as if the flare on the architectural horizon would he forgotten as quickly as the flash of a meteor. In fact, client, architects, authorities and contractors were working and building.

Ismail Serageldin, [2] Director of the Library, says that it must be a 'centre of excellence'. Many criticisms have suggested that the project is far too expensive for a poor country because it diverts funds from the indigent to building monuments to the literate. Serageldin ripostes that no-one can predict exactly what will happen if you set up a centre of excellence, which can cost a very small percentage of a nation's GDP. He looks at Indian experience, where high levels of specialization in programming have been able to build an amazingly profitable economic complex of software production that stretches from South Asia to Silicon Valley. He argues that the new library could do the same, but in completely unpredictable ways. It will have an intimate relationship with the university across the road, the institution which gave it birth: both must benefit.