Construction progress on the federal government's largest cultural building site: First section of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz Unter den Linden has been handed over
Press release from 04/18/2011
A few days ago, the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning handed over the first completed rooms in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin's Unter den Linden building to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Over the next few weeks, the librarians will move into the rooms - vault storage, stacks, restoration workshops and offices.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK: "Following the establishment of the library's new digitisation centre, which has been working in the Unter den Linden building since autumn 2010, moving into the new rooms is an important next step. And the reopening of the new General Reading Room, which we will celebrate in 2012, is now also within reach."
"Stacks, workshops and offices - that's the first step. But we are all very much looking forward to the second step, the opening of the reading room, which the public will then also be able to enjoy!" adds Barbara Schneider-Kempf, Director General of the Berlin State Library.
The building at Unter den Linden 8, which opened in 1914 and was partially destroyed in the Second World War, has been completely renovated and modernised since 2005 and new buildings have been added according to plans by architect HG Merz. The cost of the building work is around 365 million euros. At 170 x 107 metres, the largest historical building complex in the centre of Berlin, bordered by the streets Unter den Linden, Charlottenstraße, Dorotheenstraße and Universitätsstraße, is currently the largest cultural construction site of the federal government.
The construction work is divided into two phases. In the first construction phase, the northern half of the building will be renovated and modernised and supplemented with new buildings by 2012. The first part of this construction phase is now complete with the move into the refurbished old building and the vault stacks. In spring 2012, the General Reading Room, designed as a glass cube, and the newly constructed Rara Reading Room will be handed over to the library and opened a few weeks later.
In the second construction phase, which has already begun on one part of the building, the southern half of the library building will be renovated and modernised. An open stacks accessible from the general reading room, reading rooms for the State Library's valuable special collections, exhibition areas and catering facilities for library users will also be created. Completion is scheduled for 2014.
The premises that have now been handed over will be occupied by June 2011.
The newly built vault stacks, which meet the highest conservation and security requirements, are spread over 3,000 square metres on two underground floors. They are equipped with mobile shelving systems for the vibration-free movement of the holdings, an air conditioning system for constant environmental conditions of 18 degrees Celsius and 50 per cent relative humidity and a gas extinguishing system as part of the strict security management. The incunabula collection (early prints from 1452 to 1500) and the collection of particularly rare and valuable prints (rare books collection, from 1501 onwards) will move in first. The valuable music collections and large parts of the map collections will follow in the autumn.
The historic stacks on the six upper floors of the 13-storey old building, which are fully equipped with the self-supporting Lipman shelving system created between 1903 and 1914, have also been refurbished and equipped with modern technical infrastructure. These rooms are now also air-conditioned. Over the next two months, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, 32,000 linear metres of the library's historical book collection can be brought together and properly stored in a single location. The storage workstations are also equipped with modern IT technology, which will help to make books available more quickly.
Ten workshop rooms and specialised laboratories equipped with the latest technology were also handed over. There, the restorers and bookbinders will devote themselves to the preservation of the State Library's valuable holdings and carry out research into new conservation techniques. Finally, the first 25 newly furnished offices have been occupied by employees of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
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