Beyond books European cities embrace new era of libraries as living rooms

Outside the futuristic glass-and-metal tiers of De Krook, Ghent's city library, stand four giant, brightly painted figures  leaning in towards each other - as if telling each other something.

- Jon Henley

"That's really what it's about," said Els Van Rompay, De Krook's service and communications coordinator. "This is more than a library, though books are its core.

It's also a place to learn, connect, develop, collaborate. Or just to be.

A meeting place for our minds." De Krook is not alone. Helsinki's Oodi central library, Dokk1 in Denmark's Aarhus, and Deichman Bjørvika in Oslo - all also built since 2016 - share much the same vision of the library: in effect a living room for the 21st-century city.

Enter De Krook - named after the bend in the Scheldt River on which it sits, linking the medieval city centre of Belgium's third biggest city with its university quarter - and you join more than 4,000 others who also do so every day.

They range from primary pupils visiting the children's library, with multilingual storytelling machines and reading boxes to curl up in, to pensioners taking internet lessons.