Taiyuan, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Old boilers, staggered pipes, mottled brick walls... It's hard to imagine that these are the interiors of a library. When the industrial atmosphere "meets" the rich aroma of books, a library transformed from a boiler room brings readers a lot of novel experiences.
Readers read books in the Ungang Library on April 22. (Courtesy of Yungang Library)
Yungang Library, located in Yungang District, Datong City, Shanxi Province, is the documentation center of Yungang Research Institute and an academic venue for providing scientific research services for "Yungang Studies". Yungang Research Institute is an institution specializing in the protection, research and management of Yungang Grottoes. In 2020, in order to respond to the local government's call for "coal to electricity" and solve the problem that massive materials, literature and books could not be stored and read centrally, yungang research institute decided to convert the boiler room that had been used for 12 years into a library. In June 2021, the reconstructed Yungang Library was officially put into use, which is not only open to the researchers of the Yungang Research Institute, but also to the public.
Entering the Yungang Library, the old boiler room has long changed: the coal storage silo has become a library, the coal stove has been hollowed out as a coffee bar, the top of the stove has been built into a reading area, and the bookshelves, railings, and stairs in the library have been transformed and processed from the waste metal machinery in the original boiler room.
This is a corner of the Unoka Library taken on October 9, 2021. (Courtesy of Yungang Library)
Zhang Zhuo, the main designer of Yungang Library, said: "The boiler room is a product of a specific era, sooner or later it will be eliminated due to the use of clean energy, and it may become a 'cultural relic' in less than 20 years, and our descendants will never see it again." If it is converted into a library, it not only preserves the boiler room, but also makes effective use of its space. Compared to simple demolition, it can be said that it is a lot of work. ”
The ingenious integration of the industrial imprint and the modern fashion culture atmosphere with a sense of age exudes a unique charm and attracts many readers to come to the "punch card" experience, and Shi Zhanghan, a reader from Guangdong, is one of them. He said: "When I first came in, I was very shocked, in addition to the industrial design, its collection of books is also very rich, which opened my eyes." ”
It is reported that the collection of materials and books in Yungang Library covers many fields such as history, cultural relics and archaeology, and has more than 30,000 paper books and periodicals and newspapers. Yungang Library has become the library with the largest collection of books on the Grotto Temple in Shanxi Province, and has basically formed a literature collection system and service system that meets the needs of various disciplines and scientific research of Yungang Research Institute.