Paris is a city from the future, probably. Turns out all the cool stuff is exactly where I haven't been for the last week and a half, and I'm just a little spicy about that.
I mean, look at the middle of the National Library here-
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| I look wistfully into the Neo-Paris skyline as I wait for my hacker contact to hand off 3 megs of hot RAM |
It's got a tiny evergreen forest in it, which is not only rad, but is totally the closest we've gotten to the robot pets from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, in terms of creating artificial nature in our dystopian cities.
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but it sorta makes sense, though, thinking about it. A lot of speculative fiction is about people dealing with the issues presented by emerging technology, but we've been doing the same thing without thinking about it for pretty much all of history.
A lot of urban design is dedicated to making cities not only functional, but livable. You've gotta have people be willing to exist in your city, once it's built. Libraries and other public spaces are part of that, and reflect what's important to both the designers of these spaces, and the people who end up using them. The forested courtyard here isn't only cool to look at, it's also greenspace, and provides a means for warm, natural light to enter the mostly subterranean library. Also, it deals with an important issue that comes along with a big underground courtyard- dealing with water.
I'm pretty sure if there were just a patch of grass there, you'd have a swamp the first time it rained. Cool, but not everyone's idea of ideal greenspace. Also, pine trees are cool to look at.
The forest itself isn't accessible as far as I know, but it's still cool to look at, and it's a lot better than the Manila folder-yellow public library I grew up visiting. Good move, France.