A century is enough to witness the rise and fall of an era and the library will undoubtedly leave a mark to the era.

The Tainan Library, which was built in 1919, temporarily resided in Wu Family Garden Chinese-style building. In 1921, a two-story foreign-style red brick building was built on the south bank of Deqing Creek, which opened the door for Tainanese to the public library; in 1975, it transformed into the current location of the reinforced concrete cube. The third-generation new headquarters will open in January 2021. After a century of history, it moved from Fucheng to Yongkang District. With the advancing of the times, the public library not only highlights the urban scholarly culture, but also advances to become a field that satisfies all-age citizens for cross-domain learning.

The new main building of Tainan Public Library, which carries the expectations of the public, was jointly built by a team of architects from Taiwan and the Netherlands. The architectural design concept comes from Tainan Temple. Architects of Dutch Mecanoo got the design inspiration from daily life in Tainan. From the tree shade and the sunshade roof, a large amount of shading space is extended from the bottom to the top and layer by layer in the new general plan, which reduces direct sunlight and fully reflects the climate. At the same time, the characteristics of Taiwanese arcade are incorporated, and the inverted stepped facade design is adopted to make the superstructure look like big eaves.

Different from the fancy appearance of public buildings in Taiwan in recent years, the appearance of the new general plan building with 2 floors underground and 6 floors above ground looks like a rectangular building with surrounding columns. In fact, it implies the architect's reflection on modern public buildings-the design is concise, but not simple. The eye-catching facade grille imprints the totem of the stained-glass windows on Tainan Old Street, which not only prevents heat, but also links Tainan's history. From the connotation to the exterior, it responds to how the city views the citizens' desire for public libraries.

The new library has established a number of initiatives, like the first to invite independent bookstores to enter, becoming the first library with a bookstore in the library. Another initiative is to set up the Maker space to provide basic equipment such as leather carving, sewing, photography, etc., to promote the self-made atmosphere and also support the development of the local cultural and creative industry.

Closely connected with the local area is the Tainan special area on the 4th floor, which has the Tainan research and municipal area. There is also a library of 16,000 precious books during the Japanese Occupation, as well as the Tainan Hall of Fame and Tainan Writers' Zone. The outer wall of the 4th floor is a window grille with Tainan image, both inside and outside can be said as the most characteristic of Tainan. Responding to the tradition, it not forgets to respond to the pragmatic needs of modern people. In the future, there will be the largest 24-hour book collection machine in the country to facilitate the borrowing and returning of books.

The new main library is positioned as a comprehensive and research-oriented public library, meeting the needs of citizens for reading, knowledge learning and information retrieval for at least the next 30 years. The internal space planning is divided according to age groups. In recent years, Taiwan’s library statistics show that the children’s area has the highest usage rate. The new library has not only a children’s book area, but also a pop-up book area, a children’s audio-visual area, and an outdoor sand piling area, as well as a five-sense exploration area for children aged 0-5 to cultivate early reading habit. Approximately 1.8 hectares of green space are extended outwards, and the "Reading Forest" parent-child theme park is planned.

Not only as a library for reading, the new library will also be a multi-functional and compound public space. The cooking classroom on the first basement floor showcases Tainan’s characteristic food culture. Tainan is the capital of gourmet, and this classroom can be dedicated to lectures on food-related topics. Through practical operation and sharing, the library can be turned into a living room for reading and communication in Tainan.

The library is a cultural landscape of the city, and it is also highly connected to the city. In order to create a library with a high usage rate, the new main library takes everything into serious consideration, from building hardware to software services. Not only continuing the age-based segmentation configuration, it also taking into account the reading needs of 0-99 years old, abandoning the bookshelves with a higher collection of books and lowering the bookshelves, just to make it easier for readers to obtain books. It seems trivial, but shows a high level of attentiveness.

In addition to planning a warm and beautiful public reading space, the new library also collects three public works, including Paul Cocksedge's "Gust of Wind", TSAI Chieh-Hsin's "Reading Books←→Through Time and Space" and HSU Ruey Shian's "Time Existence" in the five senses exploration area, which ornaments the scenery of reading.

Writer： TSAO Ting-Ting Photo：Tainan Public Library