A spiralling tower made from thousands of books is the latest landmark to dot the skyline of Buenos Aires.
The 25m-high construction by Argentine artist Marta Minujin encases books in dozens of different languages.
The monument celebrates Buenos Aires being named the 2011 World Book Capital by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
The ‘Tower of Babel’ climbs seven floors of scaffolding.
Minujin, who once worked alongside iconic American artist Andy Warhol, said over 30,000 tomes of books were included, all of them donated by readers, libraries and more than 50 embassies.
‘A call was sent out to the embassies asking for a book that someone from their country would read. Because sometimes you go to Germany or wherever and you want a book in Spanish and there is nothing. And here either – in the libraries there aren’t books in other languages. So this is a way of bringing us together and making us more cosmopolitan’ Minujin told Reuters during the project inauguration on Wednesday.
A biography of Prince Charles was packed next to best sellers by the likes of Chilean author Isabelle Allende, on the stand.
Dozens of workers scurried over the structure’s scaffolding for almost two weeks, attaching the plastic encased books to its walls to bring the tower to life.
The exhibit will end later this month. Minujin says that literature lovers will be allowed to come and pick one book each to take home.
The remaining books will be brought down to start a new archive that has already been dubbed, ‘The Library of Babel,’ the name of a story by Argentina’s most famous author, Jorge Luis Borges.
