The Starfield Library in Seoul is a beautiful, vast, library. It reminds me of the short visit I had to Singapore’s library@orchard. It fits in with a pattern I notice in Asia, which is the rise of these incredibly glamorous spaces for books. They’re usually bookstores (I mentioned some briefly before here). 

One possible reason for this is the initiators of these projects have come to realize that people don’t inherently value books on their own so much anymore. To a cynic, the books play second fiddle to the building—they’re practically interior decoration. For the same reason people are buying more vinyl records—and it’s not because they’re listening to more vinyl—people also buy books.

If I were to take the optimistic stance, the interior design elevates the books, and gets people at least closer to picking one up—even if just to take the photo—which brings them that much closer to opening it and reading a page. It’s nice to see that books have found another way to fit into people’s evolving lifestyles.