Interiors intended to store, preserve or display objects mediating the relationship between them and visitors. Public and private in terms of property, many of them institutions, were also places of construction of the social, however, the primary funtion of the cabinets was different. Libraries, Museums and Commercial Galleries, reading rooms, exhibition galleries, all these collections when made public, demanded a building.
These cases are of concern both for their forms of storage (scale of the furniture and room) and for the sequence of galleries, stairs, lobbies, foyers that organize them (enclosure systems).
Reading room
Museum room
Commercial galleries
Sala Medina
Biblioteca Nacional
This library, originally the private collectuon of José Toribio Medina, was moved to the new National Library building starting in 1925. Medina was a prominent Chilean historian of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, author of important books on the history of colonial Chile, and also a collector and preserver of document on the history of Latin America. Towards the end of his life, he donated part of his archives to the National Library, requesting that the room be named after him. This 93 m2 room stores around 40.000 titles in a series of perimeter furniture distributed across three levels of height. There are two central tables for visitors and researchers, along with two small tables for librarians. One of them belonged to Medina. Each corner of the room has woorden stairs connecting the first level with the upper walkways. Each walkways is bordered by a railing (originally made of wood, now wrought iron) that serves as a balcony and support for paintings that adorn the room. On the access pediment and the ceiling, there are paintings by Ernest Courtois that depict Medina`s work as an editor and narrate some of the places he studied.