By Wong Kah Wei
The BookBridge is one of the more distinctive design features of Central Library. As you walk towards the Central Library, you cannot help but notice a long shelf of leather-bound books stretched in a lit space above the main entrance of Central Library. It seems to say – this is your library, a library with a rich history, a library of legacy.
The BookBridge, constructed from tropical Mass Engineered Timber (MET), showcases a selection of rare books from the NUS Libraries’ Rare Book collection. This shelf measures 31 meters in length and 2.1 meters in height, featuring layers of compressed renewable wood meticulously assembled.
The timber shelf was designed by Professor Shinya Okuda of NUS’ Department of Architecture and built by home-grown woodworking firm Roger & Sons. The shelf won the iF Design Award 2022 in the discipline of Interior Architecture (iF Design Award, n.d.). The prestigious award recognises good design for consumers and the design community. The planning, design, fabrication and testing of the shelf took two years (Lee, 2021).
With such a beautiful timber shelf, we filled it with rare books such as Fables & Folk-tales from an Eastern Forest (1901), The Birds of Singapore Island (1927), University of Malaya Foundation’s Pictorial Souvenir (1949) and so on. The gold-lettering and design on the leather spines of these books can be seen from afar in the BookBridge.
Beautiful as it looks, BookBridge was not accessible to the public because of the rare books kept inside. The environment in that space is climate-controlled. The temperature and humidity levels are managed to preserve and protect the rare books (Wong, 2023). So to encourage exploration of the BookBridge, a Virtual Tour was created to guide “visitors” to peek into the space and to browse some of the rare books online.
Mrs Lee Cheng Ean, former University Librarian (2014-2022) considers the BookBridge as a powerful symbol representing the connection and integration of knowledge from both the past and the future, serving as a legacy for generations to come.
The idea of the BookBridge started with Mrs Lee’s visits to various academic libraries such as the Bienecke Library at the Yale University and the Weston Library at the Oxford University. She was in awe of the beautiful features of these libraries.
So when Central Library was being planned for renovation between 2018 and 2021, Mrs Lee took the opportunity to create a distinctive design feature for Central Library which will inspire library visitors to learn, use and create new knowledge. The biggest challenge was the lack of space to build a magnificent structure.
However, when Mrs Lee attended the grand opening of SDE4, NUS’ first Net-Zero Energy Building, she was rewarded for her tenacity in looking for a distinctive and yet sustainable design.
“As I walked around the building and looked at the new spaces and facilities, I chanced upon the Sky Timber display by Prof Shinya and his researchers,” Mrs Lee shared. “I was drawn to the beautiful interlocking layers of timber compressed together. My mind began to work on over drive. I thought ‘This could be what we are looking for. Our display shelves for the rare books‘.”
Mrs Lee connected the aesthetics with the concept of renewability to undergird the library’s philosophy of preserving our collections for our future. BookBridge, as a distinctive feature of a library, shows that a functional piece of art and architecture can inspire beauty, learning and sustainability.
In advancing his research, Professor Shinya’s work continues to inspire in the incorporation of renewable tropical timber into the rehabilitation centre in Alexandra Hospital’s Cocoon building. The timber was harvested from the hospital grounds during the clearing of the construction site and repurposed as installations (NUS CDE, 2024).
We are proud to have the BookBridge as a distinctive feature of the Central Library, reminding us that books and the knowledge contained in them are as inspiring and beautiful as the concept of the BookBridge itself.
References
iF Design Award 2022 (n.d.). BookBridge: Library. https://ifdesign.com/en/winner-ranking/project/bookbridge/349845
Lee, C.E. (2021, March 24). Launch of BookBridge : Bridging knowledge for a sustainable future. [Unpublished speech]
NUS College of Design and Engineering (2024, March 26). BioHeal: Tree upcycling for architectural healing. https://cde.nus.edu.sg/news-detail/bioheal-tree-upcycling-for-architectural-healing/
Wong, K.W. (2023, September 14). A Virtual peek inside our award-winning BookBridge. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/linus/2023/09/14/a-virtual-peek-inside-our-award-winning-bookbridge/
