Video generated using: http://test.p6.com 2300 years ago, Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s pupil, brought his dream of culture and conquest, of uniting the world and launching a new era to the timeless land of Egypt. Alexander selected the site for a new capital, Alexandria, which became Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years. His successors in Egypt, the Ptolemies, built Alexandria, and made it the intellectual capital of the world. Its status as a beacon of culture was symbolized by Pharos, the legendary lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. What setting could have excelled this for the stormy relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony? Alexandria's greatest legacy was the Ancient Library of Alexandria: part academy, part research center, and part library. The great thinkers of the age, scientists, mathematicians, poets from all civilizations came to study and exchange ideas. As many as 700,000 scrolls filled the shelves. Here came Aristarchus, first person to state that the earth revolves around the sun, a full 1800 years before Copernicus; The list of great names and great achievements goes on and on… Eratosthenes proved that the earth was spherical and calculated its circumference with amazing accuracy, 1700 years before Columbus sailed on his epic voyage Hipparchus established the first atlas of the stars and calculated the length of the solar year accurately to within 6.5 minutes Callimachus the poet described the texts in the library organized by subject and author, becoming the father of library science, Euclid wrote his elements of geometry, the basic text studied in schools all over the world even now Herophylus identified the brain as the controlling organ of the body and launched a new era of medicine. Archimedes invented the screw pump, still used all over the world today. For 600 years this was a great center of learning until it burned down in the 3rd century. Later, generations of immigrants from Greece, Italy and the Levant settled here and made the city synonymous with commerce, cosmopolitanism and bohemian culture. This Alexandria has been immortalized by writers such as E-M- Forster when Alexandria was a place where women strolled in sun dresses, not headscarves and caftans, and where religion was a matter of personal choice, not political campaigning. In 1974, the University of Alexandria began a campaign to build a new Library of Alexandria, dedicated to recapture the spirit of openness and scholarship of the original Bibliotheca. Designed by the Norwegian architect Snohetta, the library is a tilting disc, a sundial, rising from the ground, with four levels below ground and seven above. The substructure of the library is the most innovative part of the project. Its circular diaphragm wall is considered the largest in the world. Its exterior wall is clad with four thousand granite blocks carved with letters from the alphabets of the world. One of the most successful features of the building is the use of natural light. In the main reading area, lights are switched on only after 18h00. The orientation of the roof panels was carefully studied on computer at the design stage to introduce maximum levels of natural light without direct sunlight. Glare was dealt with in the design of the glass shading over the windows. The main reading area is one open space, ‘where past, present and future symbolically connect in a singular open space’ (Snøhetta). It covers 70,000 m² on 11 cascading levels and can accommodate 2,000 readers at any one time. There are six specialist libraries, three museums, seven research centres, three permanent galleries, space for temporary exhibitions, a planetarium, a public plaza, offices, and a cafeteria. The BA is the first in Africa and the Middle East to provide researchers with a walk-in virtual reality system and houses the Internet Archive, a complete snapshot of all web pages on every website since 1996. Since the average lifetime of a p...

• published: 14 Apr 2012
• views: 124