I libri, la biblioteca, la città

There are many suggestive ways to decline the theme of books and the city. The first is the one who reads and interprets the correspondences between some books and specific cities, with an approach that is only apparently literary since it could lead to considerations of a spatial as well as historical and social nature. A second aspect looks at books and spaces intended as elements of mediation (or interaction) with the city: they are libraries that give presence to books and that offer themselves as places of culture: They represent the space of books in the city and in the city. The first question, concerning the book-city symmetries, is too fascinating not to be mentioned with some examples (very partial and almost autobiographical); instead we intend to dwell on the role of libraries - and therefore on the presence of books - in the contemporary city and society in order to interpret the sense and value (spatial, symbolic and narrative) to which architecture "corresponds" through the design of both library and of the city, the latter in the double vision of "urbs" and "civitas", that is, of physical space and community.