Welcome to the Future Library Silent Room. We invite you to take off your shoes and quietly enter the space
Future Library is an artwork by artist Katie Paterson. The Silent Room is situated on the top floor of the library along with the special collections of books and archives. It faces in the direction of the Future Library forest. It is a small, intimate room, encouraging only a few visitors at a time.
The Silent Room is made of trees from the Nordmarka forest, cleared to make space for the Future Library forest. The trees have been cut into approximately 16,000 pieces. It contains one hundred drawers, one for each of the author’s manuscripts, the drawers are etched with the author’s name and the year of their text. Their manuscripts are just visible, hinted at through glowing lights. Built in one hundred layers of wood, like unfolding tree rings, the drawers are scattered throughout the space, one per ‘ring’. Preservation, security, and longevity have been carefully considered throughout the design process, which includes a lighting system to last a century.
“We have created the Silent Room using the trees we cleared from the forest, still containing their scent. The atmosphere is key in our design, aiming to create a sense of quietude, peacefulness, a contemplative space which can allow the imagination to journey to the forest, the trees, the writing, the deep time, the invisible connections, the mystery.” Katie Paterson
Nils Ole Bae Brandtzæg, architect, Atelier Oslo, says “A narrow passage creates a transition from the open and bright library space to the secluded and calm atmosphere of the Silent Room. An integrated bench invites you to sit down and contemplate while the one hundred layers of curved wood embraces you.”
The artist and architects have taken inspiration from around the world including Ise Jinju Shrine in Japan – where trees have been grown over centuries to build the sacred spaces.
Katie Paterson says: “The room provides a space for quiet reflection. It is a slow space, allowing visitors to feel time – to be silent and still. It has been designed with simplicity, purity and restraint in mind. Organic shapes like tree rings wind round the space and invite visitors in. The core of the ‘tree’ contains one hundred drawers embedded in the wood. These soft, curved shapes contrast with the rest of the library. The Oslo Fjord is visible outside, and visitors can gaze out towards the Future Library forest. Within this quietude they can consider what’s hidden inside the texts, and the depth of time lying ahead; the unborn authors, the sealed words, the generations of people to come that the project speaks to.”
Future Library is a century long artwork unfolding in Oslo, created by artist Katie Paterson. A forest has been planted in Oslo, which in one hundred years, will become an anthology of books. Written for this explicit place and time by writers all over the world - some of whom are not yet born - the books will be printed on the paper made from the trees after they are fully grown and cut down, only to be read after 2114.
The City of Oslo has gifted Future Library a forest in Nordmarka just outside the city, and in May 2014, one thousand new trees were planted. It will be a further ninety-two years from now before the trees are felled to provide the paper on which the texts will be printed as an anthology of books in 2114. Visitors to the forest can experience the slow growth of the trees, inch-by-inch, year-by-year. Participating authors include: Margaret Atwood (2014), David Mitchell, (2015), Sjón (2016), Elif Shafak (2017), Han Kang (2018), Karl Ove Knausgård (2019), Ocean Vuong (2020) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (2021).
Hailed by many as a ‘library of the future’, the Deichman Bjørvika is proud to house Future Library’s Silent Room. Katie Paterson has worked in collaboration with architects Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem to design this quiet room which will house the one hundred author’s manuscripts, as part of the library’s precious collections. Intended to be a space of contemplation, the room is lined with wood from the Future Library forest. The authors’ names and year will be on display, but none of the manuscripts will be available for reading – until their publication in 2114.
Artist: Katie PatersonFor more information please visit the artwork website
futurelibrary.no