Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of this library. You exit the traditional parlor of a large New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disneyland ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) The floor is an Escher maze of tiles and the etched glass banisters change color. Who or what is behind the amazing space, you ask? And can I touch everything?
Photo: Andrew Moore
The man is entrpreneur and inventor Jay Walker. His company, Walker Digital created Priceline.com and many other businesses that reframe old problems with new IT. In his private life, he's a bibliophile and collector on an epic scale.
It's befitting that an entrepreneur and inventor so prolific and acclaimed would curate a library devoted, as he says, to the astonishing capabilities of the human imagination. He's fascinated by intellectual property in all its forms. The library’s design, spearheaded by Walker’s wife, is a creative and intellectual feat of its own. The 3-story-high building, computer-controlled and brilliantly lit to change colors, is like the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only concerned with something much sweeter and more addictive than chocolate — pure imagination in all its scientific, artistic, technological and undefinable forms. A glass bridge, suspended in space, stretches across the library — so you can literally take a leap of human imagination as you marvel at the world-changing artifacts surrounding you. Walker commissioned decorative etched glass, dynamic lighting, and even a custom soundtrack that sets the tone for the cerebral adventures hidden in this cabinet of curiosities. "I said to the architect, 'Think of it as a theater, from a lighting and engineering standpoint,'" Walker says. "But it's not a performance space. It's an engagement space."
Gadget Lab: The large contraption at center is the Nazis' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code machine. The book to its left is a copy of Johannes Trithemius' 1518 Polygraphiae, a cryptographic landmark.
A chunk of his net worth went into building this enchanting library space, whose exhibits (yes, please touch!) go back, roughly, to the point our species learned to write. Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate this massive library. To create it, Walker and architect Mark Finlay first built a 7-foot-long model. Then they used miniature cameras to help visualize what it would be like to move around inside. Imagineers would be right at home. Read the entire article at WIRED.
