When the Stanford Lane Medical Library was inaugurated in November of 1912, one of the celebrated features was the building’s fireproof nature. It’s a steel building, wrapped in concrete and containing glass floors for most of the book “stacks”. The glass floors, unique for letting the natural light drift down from floor to floor, was the area where the librarians would orchestrate the comings and goings of the unique medical books that the library housed.

Today we are keeping the wish of Dr. Lane — the building’s brilliant visionary, funder and initial donor of thousands of volumes of books — alive by honoring his idea that the library would be the place for the latest and best information on human biology. We’ve increased the scope to include all species biology. We hope he would appreciate this as he could have no way of imagining (or could he?) the discovery of the double helix in all life forms, CRISPR-Cas9, potential gene manipulation for preparations to colonize mars or future medicines we are losing from the current species extinction. The future of all biology is, for better or for worse, increasingly linked.

These glass floor stacks will soon be the place for augmented reality experiences, immersive theatre art, multi-floor light installations and more.

After 60 years, the Earth Codes Observatory removed the carpet which covered the glass when Stanford’s book collection relocated to Palo Alto. Light once again filtered through the three floors of glass, all the way into the basement, as it originally did.

As we remove some of the stacks to allow for more flexible use of the space, each is carefully numbered and stored in case one day books or other objects will be displayed. Only approximately 30% of the stacks are being stored. Visitors peer up and down, almost having a sense of weightlessness.

Floating in space – Once the carpets were removed, a sense of floating was achieved as light creates an optical illusion of being in air or water depending on the hue.