CABINET DE LECTURE

Cabinet de Lecture, Bordeaux
Free-thinking in the park

At first sight a large shed in the park, the timber box designed by Konstantin Grcic nods to the 18th and 19th century Cabinet de Lecture and is part of the City of Bordeaux Cultural Season dedicated to Freedom.

The earlier reading rooms offered warmth, light and relative comfort. Also access to books, papers and periodicals possible for a small fee at time when print was expensive and exclusive, opening up conversation and learning in a public place. This one does something similar with shelter from the sun, weekly readings of Aurélien Bellanger’s summer novel and pinned texts on the freedom theme, including an excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid's Tale:

Their heads are uncovered and their hair too is exposed, in all its darkness and sexuality. They wear lipstick, red, outlining the damp cavities of their mouths, like scrawls on a washroom wall, of the time before. I stop walking. Ofglen stops beside me and I know that she too cannot take her eyes off these women. We are fascinated, but also repelled. They seem undressed. It has taken so little time to change our minds, about things like this.
Then I think: I used to dress like that. That was freedom. Westernised, they used to call it.
The Japanese tourists come towards us, twittering, and we turn our heads away too late: our faces have been seen.

A novel published in the 1980s and still current, and a form of building with a purpose that has not lost its relevance or popularity.

Cabinet de Lecture Konstantin Grcic
Fête du Fleuve Jardin Public City of Bordeaux Cultural Season