Recycled Pallet Pavilion – Inhabitat

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Beautiful German Pavillion Made From 1300 Shipping Pallets | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.

Born to (ex)change

 

Ita.

Siamo a Colonia, in Germania.

In città sono state installate cinque strutture di questo tipo in cui chiunque può prendere i libri che preferisce e lasciarne altri. Lo scambio avviene in maniera anonima, senza registrazioni né scadenze. Basta semplicemente aprire l’anta e scegliere il titolo tra quelli offerti nella “libreria”.

Michael Aubermann, uno dei promotori del progetto, sottolinea che il progetto è aperto a chiunque. In città le librerie sono già molto utilizzate e altre stanno per essere posizionato a Bonn, Hannover e Berlino. Le aree in cui vengono installate non sono casuali: sono privilegiate le zone più povere delle città dove l’accesso ai libri risulta più difficoltoso.

Questa tipo di strutture si trovano (da qualche parte del mondo) anche sugli autobus.

 

Engl.

Take a book, leave a book. In the birthplace of the printing press, public bookshelves are popping up across the nation on street corners, city squares and suburban supermarkets.

In these free-for-all libraries, people can grab whatever they want to read, and leave behind anything they want for others. There’s no need to register, no due date, and you can take or give as many as you want.

“This project is aimed at everyone who likes to read — without regard to age or education. It is open for everybody,” Michael Aubermann, one of the organizers of the free book exchange in the city of Cologne, told The Associated Press.

Each shelf holds around 200 books and it takes about six weeks for a complete turnover, with all the old titles replaced by new ones.This in the picture is the fourth free-shelf that Aubermann’s group, the Cologne Citizen’s Foundation, has placed outside. Every public shelf costed euro5,000 ($6,883), is made out of a steel bookcase with acrylic glass doors and is usually financed by donations and cared for by local volunteer groups.

So far, the Cologne book group has had few problems with vandalism or other kinds of abuse, though a used-book seller once scooped up every volume on a shelf to sell at a flea market. Another time the shelves kept getting stacked with material from a religious group. “We made sure to get rid of that stuff as quickly as possible,” Aubermann said. “Propaganda is the only kind of literature we do not allow here, whether it is right-wing, racist or proselytizing.”

The book cases are like small treasure chests with an eclectic mix of anything from fiction to obscure self-help, travel guides or crime novels. At another bookshelf in the Bayenthal neighborhood, the lower shelves were reserved for children’s literature only.

“It is important that we make it easy for everyone to overcome their inhibitions and participate in this ‘reading culture on the street’ — from old readers to kids to immigrants,” Aubermann said.

While most of the shelves have so far been put up in upscale neighborhoods, Aubermann and the 20 volunteers who help look after the project are planning to put up future shelves in poor neighborhoods, where residents often don’t have as much access to literature. Just a few weeks ago, Aubermann said he was contacted by a Portuguese NGO that asked him for help with opening public book shelves in poor rural areas of Mozambique.