Shanghai to embrace art-inspired children's library in 2021

Inspired by French impressionist Claude Monet's masterpiece of the Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, Shanghai is building a brand-new library for children, which is expected to open in the latter half of 2021.

With a history of more than half a century, the Shanghai Children's Library started to build a new library in 2018 and saw the steel-structured facility capped on Monday, one week ahead of schedule, though the construction progress had been affected by the COVID-19 epidemic.

The new arch-shaped library, located in a large park, covers an area of 16,000 square meters and will have an overall collection of more than 800,000 books for millions of children in the city.

The idea of its interior design came from "The Library of Babel" of Argentine fiction writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, with rounded bookshelves and spiral staircases creating a free and open reading space for all children.