The Legend of the Sinking Library — An Architect’s Worst Nightmare
A tale about blind spots and the weight of knowledge
An urban legend has been circulating in the architectural and academic communities for decades. Surfacing in the 1970s, there is a tale of a vast university library that was built to hold an astounding number of books. The library opened to much fanfare and was filled with thousands of tomes representing a titanic amount of knowledge. After the library was filled and opened to the public, something terrible happened. The library started sinking. Year by year, little by little, the library sank. Inch by inch, the foundation sank until the library had to be shuttered. The architect lost their job and was forced to leave the field forever.
Why did the library sink? According to the tale, it was because the architect did not account for the weight of all of the books that were to fill the library. The largest libraries in the world can hold between 14 and 18 million books, which can amount to 10 million to 18 million pounds of additional weight.
This is a tale that has different meanings to different people. It is used as a cautionary tale in architecture. The legend of the sinking library is used to remind architects to double and triple check their measurements and calculations. In architecture…
