Plan Inside First
Librarian and architect should collaborate from the beginning in every interior detail. The exterior should not even be considered until the interior has been entirely mapped out.
This elemental maxim does not appear to have been laid down until the formulation of the “Points of Agreement.” Indeed, the first mistakes in building libraries, and the mistakes still too often made, may be attributed largely to the search for precedents in style, the formulation of the exterior before what it is to hold or express is defined. Most architectural competitions (except those held to dodge responsibility in selecting an architect) arise from an impression on the part of the building committee and the board and community they represent, that the looks of the library building, the effect it makes on the public, is the main thing to secure, not so much the proper housing and handling of the books.
The whole argument of this volume is that a library is a library, a book- and study-workshop or factory; only incidentally an ornament; no more, certainly, than a schoolhouse needs to be. If so, its motives are all utilitarian, to be studied out first of all, thoroughly and faithfully, before a thought is given to exterior conditions, or any details of exterior or interior ornament. This consideration should be reiterated and hammered into the consciousness of all concerned—architect, committee, community.
“Taking into account the practical uses of the modern library, it is readily seen that it needs a building planned from inside and not from without, dictated by convenience rather than taste, no matter how good.”—Fletcher.[72]
“Consider the plans first, rather than the elevation. The outside of the library building is its least important feature.”—Duff-Brown.[73]
The buildings planned thus, by gradual development of ideal interior arrangements, are very likely in the hands of a skillful architect to turn out architecturally beautiful. For the designer, as he has advised about structural points has gradually evolved from these details a harmonious conception of what the library is to be and do, the relation it holds to its surroundings and to the public, until an ideal scheme of proportion and sympathy flashes into his mind, and Utilitas has led him up to complete Venustas.