On the sands of Miami Beach, where the horizon usually belongs to water and sky, Es Devlin has inserted something unexpected: a library that moves. Unveiled as the major centerpiece of Faena Art Miami Art Week 2025, Library of Us is a vast, glowing amphitheater of books, sound, and slow choreography. Commissioned to mark ten years of Faena Art in Miami Beach, the installation stretches across the shoreline as both spectacle and sanctuary, an architecture that asks visitors not to consume, but to pause, read, and share time.
At the heart of the work stands a kinetic, 6 meter tall triangular bookshelf, monumental yet gentle in its motion. The structure is 15 meters long and holds 2,500 books, arranged not as static objects but as part of a living system. The entire bookshelf rotates on its axis once every ten minutes, a pace slow enough to feel almost imperceptible. This gradual movement creates a quiet sense of drift, as if the architecture itself were breathing.
Designer: Es Devlin
The bookshelf is encircled by a shallow mirrored pool that reflects the structure, doubling its presence and softening the boundary between object and environment. Steel, marine plywood, mirror, water, and LED elements work together to transform the beach into a reflective, fluid landscape. In this setting, text does not shout, it glides. A continuous 10 meter LED line streams words across the spine of the bookshelf, making language visible as light and motion. Here, text moves at the pace of tides and pages rather than notifications…