918. La Petite Bibliothèque Ronde. Clamart

Dear David

This little children round library is truly a little gem.
Architects from Atelier de Montrouge worked here
in tune with the principles of some of the contemporary
structuralist international architects, and it seems to me
that specially with the ideas of Dutch architect Aldo
van Eyck. Van Eyck's project "The Wheels of Heaven"
for a protestant church in Driebergen of 1963, for
example, is formally and conceptually very similar to
this wonderful little library. Van Eyck once said that there
is a kind of spatial appreciation which makes us to envy
birds in flight, and also a kind which makes us recall the
sheltered enclosure of our origin, and that architecture
will fail if it neglects either the one or the other. Both,
spatiality and interiority are masterly exhibited in this
charming building.

Warm regards.
R