Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)
A Könyvtár épülete - The Library Building Gy. Balogh Ágnes
of the university of technology. This is also where the wide three-flight staircase made of granite is positioned to facilitate circulation between the upper part of the connecting corridor and the rooms of the library. The large single-level reading hall for students opens from the foyer and features appr. 400 m2 floor-space with a seating capacity for 200 readers. The room is 11 m tall; has a span of 16,50 m, and contains 12 marble columns to support its ornately articulated masonry vaulting. The monumental hall features partly coloured tracery windows. The spacious interior is equipped with the most modern means of heating, ventiHátion and lighting. Set on the central axis of the building, the large bookstore houses six floors (each 2,50 m tall) to contain 200.000 volumes in total (at present the collection features 90.000 books); however, its reinforced concrete structure can hold another 5 floors allowing for 400.000 volumes altogether. (Pecz elsewhere mentions that 6 floors could be added to the structure.) The floors are separated from each other partly by fireproof reinforced concrete, partly by iron and glass roofing so that one glass ceiling is inserted between the two reinforced concrete ones each pair of which is 5 m apart. Thus the storeys are only 2,50 m tall and the books stored here are within easy reach with hand, without having to use a ladder. This system has the advantage that the 2,5 m tall storeys in pairs always make up a separate fireproofly insulated unit, as the stairs leading to the upperfloors are housed outside the bookstore. This, as well as the iron bookstands, iron doors, iron windows and the elevator all meet the criteria of a modern library as well as firesafety in an ideal way. The store has an asphalt flat roof which comes in handy when the books are cleaned. The administration wing is a single-storey one and also contains the reading rooms of the teaching staff. The cellars of the building contain spacious store rooms and those needed to house the air-heating system of the large hall. As far as structure is concerned, we could mention that the foundations, because this part of the site had fine soil at a depth of appr. 3 metres, meant in this case regular foundation with entire masonry. The masonry is also a regular one built from hard brick made in Újlak. All the floors, except for those of the foyer, the students' large reading hall and the staffs reading room are are of reinforced concrete; just like the columns of the bookstore. When calculating the sizes of the columns to support the ceilings
