Interview with Prof. Acad. Arch. Dalibor Veselý, PhD. (1934)

Library for the 3rd Millennium
- introductory word
- interview with Mgr. Jan Pačes, PhD. (1967)
- interview with Mgr. Antonín Vítek, CSc. (1940)
- interview with PhDr. Zdeněk Vašíček (1933)
- interview with Prof. Dalibor Veselý (1934)

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Jiří Horský: What do you consider to be the key role of the library?
D. Veselý: Its purpose is to situate social knowledge. Or more generally: to situate education so that it becomes part of social memory. Thus, this "situatedness" also relates to the possibilities of reading and naturally to the possibilities of subsequent interpretation, i.e., to interpretation.

When we are in the library, we primarily deal with the techniques of data storage. We are interested in how interpretation and the aforementioned "situating" of knowledge can relate, for example, to the current polarity of printed and digital media.
It is enough to remember how you read a book: imagine how you flip through it or how you look at pictures, say, on a book spread … and compare it with how you usually read digital records on a screen. You will realize that the electronic world is actually observed serially - unless you print the entire book from the computer. This serial nature allows for data to be put into broader contexts later. In contrast, the book and thus the printed word represent reading that can be characterized as simultaneous. The simultaneous quality means immediate orientation and immediate comparison, literally direct contact with visible material.
By the way, similar differences can also be observed between the humanities and exact or scientific fields.

Could you elaborate on these differences?
You can observe the differences when comparing materials, or more precisely, their content - and memory.
Exact disciplines rely on theories that have only temporary validity. Simply put, science concerns the present. It touches on new discoveries, results, consequences, applications, etc. The past is only dealt with by the historian of science… On the other hand, the humanities have a vested interest in the permanent interpretation of data in a temporal whole - more precisely, in such a whole that does not have temporal boundaries. And it is therefore necessary to constantly return in time. For this reason, I consider memory and its preservation in the humanities as decisive.

Allow me to return to the realm of library architecture, that is, to the space where this "situating" of the word occurs.
The text placed on a page of a book spatially determines the meaning of individual words and sentences. And a similar spatial dependence can also be observed when placing a book in a specific location, in a specific room, library, and so on. By the way, Marcel Proust, in one of his texts, compares his In Search of Lost Time to a cathedral. He does not mean formal page layout. This comparison is used as an illustration of the relationship between the word and memory, which are contained in the written text, and between the anticipation of writing in the stone of the building. Proust speaks here of the shaping and texture of stone as a latent foretelling of actual writing…

Which is a beautiful poetic image…
This comparison of architecture and the word can lead us even deeper - to the analogy of grammar and geometry. It can be succinctly said that just as grammar is to language, geometry is to the "visible world".
And from here, geometry can also be defined as the "grammar of the visible world": including architecture.

How should we understand this brief, radical conclusion? What specifically connects the word, as we find it in the field of librarianship, with architecture itself?
First, let us say that the common denominator of both terms - word and architecture - is "communication". Their nature can therefore be characterized as communicative - albeit of a different kind in the case of the word and architecture. Sometimes this communication in the case of architecture is referred to as the "language of silence" (in the case of the word, it is about its written form - editor’s note).
If we start from the written word, it is clear that it is always related to a certain imagination. In other words, "behind the word" there is always something visual. And it should be noted that this visuality is also connected to the realization of visuality in painting - which ultimately also transitions into architecture itself. However, architecture has its own visuality, or rather visibility, which is, as we said, tied back to the common visibility associated with the word.
These connections can also be seen in a deeper dimension: that of writing or the very gesture that, through its signification, more precisely due to its abstract character, approaches the nature of geometry.

This consideration deserves closer explanation: could you illuminate the concept of "gesture"?
A gesture signifies meaningful movement. The movement of the hand. Here, it is more precisely about the movement of a hand that is beforehand informed about what it wants to say. In our case, it may mainly concern movement directed towards writing or drawing. Generally, we speak of a gesture when it is aimed at more precise expression. That is, towards the sign. This is best seen in early writing.

How do we get from here to the connection with geometry?
Early writings are essentially - for us - geometrical. The Egyptian hieroglyph is organized geometrically. Likewise, to a considerable extent, this holds true for Chinese writing. And for writings to be shared, understood, they must exhibit a certain degree of stabilized form. This form, or the stabilization of this form, essentially leads to the same thing that constitutes geometry. Because geometry essentially concerns the stability of certain shapes.
So there is some similarity - between the process of the emergence of geometry, as the emergence of shapes and configurations, and the emergence of similar regularity and stability in the formation of writing.
But what I primarily mean in the case of the gesture is the silence of expression. We know that very complex ideas or concepts can also be expressed silently. Consider the speech of the deaf-mute: what is sign language but gestures? On television, you observe how complex statements are translated into movements, into gesticulation with the hands.
In other words: how is it possible to connect this elemental nature, or these gestures, with very articulated thought? But let’s also ask the opposite: how is it possible to reduce or convert a highly articulated thought into the form of a gesture? It thus turns out that there exists a certain connection here: in other words, that in highly articulated thinking we record the presence of that gesture. If it were not there, we would not be able to communicate.

From here, it seems, you also infer a deeper relationship to architecture, or to design…
The geometric construction in the plane of projection or architectural design can also be seen as a certain type of writing. After all, we say that we "read" plans, and we must admit that it is not merely a metaphor. In reading plans, we always mean a certain specific meaning because what we see in geometric constructions, we interpret. We always translate it into something we already know. Every geometry of a plan, indeed, represents something more and much more concrete in the form of rooms, staircases, etc., that can be described with little difficulty in words. And thus what can be "expressed in language," which transitions from the word on one side to its more abstract meaning and finally to its possibility of being captured geometrically. And again we thus speak of the language of architecture. A language that becomes vocal thanks to the word, while on the architectural side it appears to us as - a silent - language.

The connection between the written text and the library is therefore not merely external, but rather internal…
The link is that signification of writing. Its meaning and content can be read in connection with the content of geometry. This is truly not seen directly here, but we are capable of seeing it. And we would understand this relationship more as a question of translation or a question of better, or more precisely deeper forms of reading. This moment of reading, if understood in its full meaning, can orient us in the area of geometry and in the role it plays in architecture, projection, etc. And in connection with that, it can also orient us back to written language, etc.
In other words, if we are asking how it is possible that the library, in its architectural arrangement, contributes to the orientation of the text itself, at first glance, it seems to be a very distant correlation. But it exists. And it has something in common with orientation as such: both in terms of the depth of language, which appears in grammar, further in the regularity of speech, or also in the principles that repeat here and in the permanence of structure and in the spatial configuration of speech. Through geometry and their common foundation, this orientation of language - which lies in the realm of silent communication - is also connected with the orientation of architecture.

The library is therefore somewhere in between…
It is both architecture, but it is also a place where the signification of writing is actually preserved. Thus it is a place where both aspects are connected: the geometry of architecture but also the grammar of language, their possible cultivation, preservation, and shared communication.

Thank you for the interview.
Jiří Horský
Cooperation: Kateřina Lopatová