Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)

A Könyvtár épülete - The Library Building Gy. Balogh Ágnes

cataloguing and reading). As the lack of space was a more and more burning issue, in 1961 the basement of the library beneath the office wing was rebuilt. During this project the spacious offices designed by Pecz upstairs were divided into smaller units by partitions. When discussing the alternatives of the extension of the library in the 1960s the idea of adding six floors to the store wing reoccurred along with additions. The former option was closest to the original concept of a twelve-storey tower store by Samu Pecz. However, in August, 1967 the plans of additional storeys made by Pál Kisdi and Dénes Perczel were rejected by the Municipal Council's Urban Development and Construction Department referring to concerns of cityscape and aesthetics. Later designs by Dénes Perczel which contained a horse-shoe-shaped, mantle-like frame to be built around the store was also given the red light in 1970 as meanwhile the Ministry of Education and Culture was working on different plans: "there would be a modern new library in Lágymányos, on the area reserved for the exhibition zone at the end of the 5th

five-year plan to be constructed in co-operation with the ELTE Department of Sciences". Issues of lack of space were thus solved by constructing compact stores in various rooms of the basement (in 1967, 1972, 1981 and 1988), as well as by using some of the Central Building (in 1969, 1991 and 1993). In December 1973 the capacity of the repositorywing was increased without building an extension oran additional storey: on five levels of the store a new row of single-sided bookstands was set up between the existing rows of two-sided bookstands.

The library building was listed as a historic building in 1977. In 1993 a new service area was created in the foyer and a staircase opened from the textbook store in front of the reading hall to lead into the basement. This way the reading hall and the stores were directly connected. January, 1995 saw the completion of the 30x30 m underground store on the courtyard of the university near the library. It was furnished with equipment