To talk about the library of the architect Benedetta Tagliabue is to talk about the shelves designed by Enric Miralles, who died twenty-three years ago today. Economical and light, they are made with white tubes nailed to the walls of the house on Carrer Mercaders that they bought in 1993 – then dilapidated – and which they rehabilitated as they rediscovered it: frescoes on the walls, hydraulic floors. The books immediately became part of the architecture as a border between the central spaces. They rise to the wooden beams, at six meters. They create corridors and corners. A dream of Miralles was to get lost in a maze of books.
Through a narrow staircase, you access a small cubicle with very low ceilings. It is “the secret room”, where the idea was to put some large cushions for reading – volumes stacked next to a pillow waiting to be placed somewhere – and from where you access the upper part of the main bookcase, which houses Renaissance and Baroque titles, Michelangelo, Bernini. Below are Giacometti, Mondrian, Rothko, Matta-Clark, Mackintosh, magazines and press clippings that mention EMBT Architects, photography books, travel books, the Bernat Metge they bought in Via Laietana, a collection of Catalan painters: Vayreda, Rusiñol, "we really like Fortuny", says Tagliabue. Everything in an order that is difficult for him to respect and allows him to know where everything is by topic, "when you feel like discovering something, you walk around and it appears".
They were not collectors, but he has some specimens from the 16th century, from when he lived in Venice and frequented antique dealers. There is an area dedicated to British authors; they loved Scotland, they won the project to make the Parliament in Edinburgh. They fell in love with Stevenson, especially her: "He seems like a genius to me, he has a way of being super-intelligent, like Proust, but looking at others". Proust changed his life, "because it makes you see things that were invisible before, it opens up the possibility of more subtle sensitivities". There is also Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Carlyle, William Blake, "Henry's great love". And a few awards, such as the Ciutat de Barcelona.
Miralles was fascinated by encyclopedias as a source of knowledge. On the Unstable table is The Red Book of Mao Zedong that a friend gave Tagliabue, and another also Chinese with beautiful illustrations, a gift from his father. Out come some cartoon pumpkins identical to ones she bought in 2002. The saleswoman laughingly told her that meant she would be back often. And yes, the Shanghai World Expo was the first of several projects in the Asian country. He travels a lot and the plane is his favorite place to read, "the ultimate relaxation", because it disconnects. She always carries a book in her bag. Now, Mirabilis: five intuitions (more to come) that have revolutionized our idea of the universe, from her astrophysicist friend Ersilia Vaudo. He doesn't give many away because they have no reason to reach the recipient, "they only open up to you on some occasions". She worries about having lost the habit of going to bookstores, which she considers wonderful places: “Books and digital devices have a similar way of providing information, but the sensations they convey are very different; the book remains".
For Miralles, the idea of happiness was the awareness of the passage of time. The same one that remains in the philosophy collection that his son Domènec sometimes plunders, and in his daughter Caterina's room, and in the titles of Quaderns Crema and Acantilado by his friend Vallcorba, in the anteroom that gives to the inner garden, and in the essays, classical Greece, Russian literature, the I Ching, "which teaches you to use books as an oracle", says Tagliabue. More bookshelves in the bedroom: a Korean one bought in New York, degrees in anthropology and meditation, many Tibetan masters. She does tai chi. She wants to reach a level of self-knowledge "useful to be happier, to make others happy, to lead a slightly more relaxed life and perhaps a slightly more relaxed death". He has always sensed that he was born to learn to die, which is the most important thing: "It depends on how you live, you reach death in one way or another; and since I see that I am not very ready for it, I insist".
