Mexico City's Biblioteca Vasconcelos (''Vasconcelos Library''), also known as Biblioteca Vasconcelos or else ''la Biblioteca Vasconcelos'' or ''la Vasconcelos'' and labeled by the press as the ''Megabiblioteca'' ("megalibrary"), is a library in the downtown area of Mexico City ( Buenavista neighborhood, Cuauhtémoc borough). It was dedicated to José Vasconcelos, the philosopher and former presidential candidate and former president of the National Library of Mexico. The library is spread across 38,000 square metres (409,000 sq ft) and had an initial planned cost of 954 million pesos (roughly US$98 million). The Congress of Mexico proposed plans to reduce the budget of 2006 that included cuts for all three branches of government. National Action Party (PAN) presented an alternative budget that preserved funds for
Enciclomedia Enciclomedia is a program of the Secretaría de Educación Pública of Mexico. It was the original idea of Dr. Felipe Bracho Carpizo in 1988 when he was the Director of Oriented Research of National Council of Science and Technology.Delegación Cuauhtémoc at the Buenavista train station where the
metro
Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to:
Geography
* Metro (city), a city in Indonesia
* A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center
Public transport
* Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...
, suburban train, and metrobus meet. It is adorned by several sculptures by Mexican artists, including Gabriel Orozco's ''Ballena'' (''Whale''), prominently located at the centre of the building.
History
Then President of Mexico Vicente Fox inaugurated the library on 16 May 2006, and stated that this was one of the most advanced constructions of the 21st century, and that it would be spoken of throughout the world. This inauguration took place a week before the deadline the president had to promote his accomplishments before the 2006 presidential election.
The library had to close in March 2007 due to construction defects.
The
Superior Auditor of the Federation
The Superior Auditor of the Federation ( es, Auditoría Superior de la Federación, ASF) is the supreme audit institution of Mexico. A technical agency of the Chamber of Deputies, it is empowered to conduct external audits of federal, state and ...
detected 36 construction irregularities and issued 13 motions of responsibility for public servants of the federal government. Among the irregularities found was the misplacement of marble blocks at a cost of 15 million pesos (roughly 1.4 million dollars).
During
Calderón
Calderón () is a Spanish and Sefardi occupational surname. It is derived from the Vulgar Latin "''caldaria''" ("cauldron") and refers to the occupation of tinker.
Calderón, or Calderon, may refer to:
* Alberto Calderón, Argentine mathematician ...
's administration, efforts to restore it continued with a further investment of 32 million pesos (roughly US$3 million).
It was reopened to the public in November 2008 after 22 months.
Architecture
The winning proposal for the library was designed by the Mexican (of Jewish descent) architects
Alberto Kalach
Alberto Kalach (born 1960) is a Mexican architect.
Biography
Alberto Kalach is of Jewish descent, born in Mexico City, studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, and completed graduate studies later at Cornell Univers ...
and
Juan Palomar
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, t ...