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Um, I mean the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. At bottom right is the “high-density, automated shelving system.” Chicagoist “digs” it; Blair Kamin fears it will look self-indulgent. Then again, Kamin hates on Walter Netsch’s Brutalist Regenstein Library, which is my favorite building on campus–an imposing, grim bunker of books that doesn’t make nice and keeps the riffraff out, the Berlin Wall of university libraries. You want repose? The dim cubicles tucked deep into the concrete on the upper levels are brimming with repose. You could die in there and no one would find you for weeks. A greenhouse? You are afraid of repose. Maybe they could build some cubicles down in the shelving system.
But if they’re going to spend that much money on a reading room and giant robot librarian, I hope they can find some to spruce up Harper Library, a truly elegant and reasonably well-lit space that, up close, looks shopworn.
