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If Disney's Beauty and the Beast gave you unrealistic expectations of libraries, you have another thought coming. This breath-taking library-cum-galley space by Tomoko Ikegai is the one for you! Check it out here…

Libraries are spaces meant for interaction and foster progressive thought. Check out this new library in Montreal readied for the 2030's and leave us your views…

Mecanoo-led renovation will give New Yorkers a completely new Mid-Manhattan Library by end of 2019! Check out the new features on the anvil.

The Yogananda Library in Himachal Pradesh exudes a strong architectural vocabulary that not only defines its functions but empowers its serene yet pulsating environment. Check it out her and leave us your views...

Winner of an international competition, Dutch architects Mecanoo and Kaohsiung-based MAYU architects' Tainan Public Library represents the meeting of cultures, generations and histories; check it out and leave us your views…

Light can work wonders for a building. Check out the library renovation at Oxford and leave us your views...

#Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes design New Hampshire's Webster library keeping changing ways of learning and new knowledge-sharing methodologies in mind. Check it out here...

A community-based intervention in Indonesia by SHAU architecture uses 2000 ice-cream buckets to create a micro-library for the lower-income populace to empower literacy. Find out more here!

India gets its first architectural archives library. Check out the action plan here and leave us your views…

@MVRDV uses curved topography to create continuous undulating bookshelves lining the interiors of the Tianjin Binhai Library in China. Check out the building here and tell us what you think…

Foster+Partners' design for the Sharjah House of Wisdom marries conventional architectural practice with innovation and technology.

Edited version of the ZDFmediatek interview with David Foster Wallace. This version offers David Foster Wallace's ideas, without repetitions, long pauses, interviewer's comments. Although some cuts may appear rough, there is no attempt at editorial bias or content manipulation. Mr. Wallace's archives (books in his library, notes, and writings) have been recently acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin.

Being seeped in a traditional flavour, adds on to the value of contemporary architecture. Check out the New Central Library being designed in New Zealand and leave us your views...

An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics. Arguably, Tunisians are now freer than Americans. The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it. Millions of telephone records were turned over to George W. Bush by our weaselly telecom companies. Courts allow government agents to sneak onto our property and put GPS tracking devices under our automobiles without so much as a warrant or even probable cause. Mr. Obama thinks this way of proceeding is a dandy idea.

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

Zaha Hadid architects unveil their design for a pioneering new institute and genocide memorial in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, which will bring together a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library. Read here...

Why are more and more old buildings being complimented by modern structures in close proximity? When should one design contextually? Are there any set tenets? Read about Ar. Zaha Hadid's new steel structure at the Oxford University building and leave us your views...

#LacimeArchitects draw out poetry in the built form in their #iconic #design of the #GuofengLibrary in #Dalian - reportedly the most liveable city in China. Read on to know more…

Designed as an ideal playscape for kids, the "Book worm" is an interactive installation at CSMVS #Mumbai by Architect/Artist Nuru Karim in collaboration with Priyashri Art Gallery to primarily draw one's attention to the significance of education in a literacy-starved society.