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Beacon
for Learning
(Photo: Iwan Baan)
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This library complex, jutting out from a hillside above Medellín, is one of five planned libraries that comprise a city-wide cultural initiative. Designed by Giancarlo Mazzanti, it was commissioned by the Mayor Sergio Farjado as part of an ambitious series of educational, cultural, and infrastructural projects to improve the conditions and the futures of the majority of the population, who live in poverty in informal housing that makes up large parts of the city. These projects have contributed to changing Medellín, economically and socially, from what was once the most violent city on earth – due to drug wars and trafficking – to an industrial and cultural hub.
Photo: Iwan Baan
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Video: “Dos gorras y una casa (Parque Biblioteca España).” Director/cutting: Youdid Kahveci, camera: Carlos Andrés López Tobón. This short movie was exclusively produced by students of the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB) for the exhibition “Culture:City” at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (2013).
Photo: Sergio Gomez
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The building consists of three, five-storey, slate-clad, façeted blocks, which contain a library and reading room, auditorium, and a series of social and recreational spaces. Primarily lit from skylights, the building provides an appropriately internalized environment, whilst externally a spectacular panorama of the city can be enjoyed from its terraces.
From afar, its distinctive form stands out from the poor Barrio Santo Domingo that surrounds it, acting as a symbol of progress, visible from across the city. Rather then an “icon,” designed to define the image of the city and be consumed internationally through 2D media, it acts more as a “beacon” of learning in the spirit of the libraries built by nineteenth century philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, a symbol of better things for the local population, both for themselves and their city: patronage in the best sense of the word. (rw)
Photo: Diana Moreno
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