The Mataha Foundation
bibliotecadelsol. com LIBRARY HIGH MOUNTAIN CULTURE ARK- SPAIN
LIBRARY
The library is a project realized by the Mataha Foundation a small non-profit organization, established by the contemporary artist Louis De Cordier. The foundation ' s mission is to enhance the well-being of humanity. The Mataha Foundation pursues this goal by realizing and supporting holistic projects that draw on knowledge of the past and present for the prosperity of future generations. The foundation started its program by supporting the ongoing archaeological research into the recently discovered labyrinth of Egypt at Hawara. This colossal temple, a legendary building lost for two millennia under the ancient sands of Egypt, was described by many classical authors such as Herodotus and Strabo as containing 3000 rooms full of hieroglyphs and paintings. A giant stone book made by the ancients as a legacy for humanity. To continue its mission the Mataha Foundation developed the " culture ark " in the high mountains of Southern Spain, storing important books in a safe way for reflection, awareness and redundancy. The library ' s concept is holistic, from the overall mission to its connection with the resilient local population. Experimentation with many architectural concepts and site locations was undertaken since the launch of the project in 2009. The outcome was to build the library in the heart of the Spanish Sierra Nevada range, situated at 2000 meter above sea level, and 1 hour driving above the nearest mountain village. Numerous public and private libraries exist around the world; but all are in geographical, political, environmental or urban locations that may potentially be hazardous, nor were they specifically designed to resist time, making this little dome complex in Andalusia, named Biblioteca del Sol, the only‘ culture ark’ on the planet. The library derived its name from the Arabic expression Sulayr, meaning ' mountain of the sun ', which is how the Moors [ 4 ] referred to the Sierra Nevada. After all, the mountain of the Sun of the ancients, was the first place in the entire Mediterranean where the light of the sun fell.
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Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These questions are probably the most fundamental to mankind. The library project founds its origin in the quest to understand our place in the present world. How we have become what we are in this electronic age? What ' s the right thing to do? The project is among many things, a contemporary art project. Over the past century art has transformed itself from its preoccupation with beauty and the representation of the world, into something much more radical. Today, art has transformed itself into what rather can be described as a vast, chaotic yet effective research program that looks critically at the foundations of knowledge and perception, and the structures that modern society has chosen to construct upon these