British designer Es Devlin has unveiled a kinetic installation that features 3,000 books and rotates around a statue in Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera gallery for the city’s design week.

Named Library of Light, the installation comprises a revolving cylindrical sculpture that is 18 metres in diameter and features angled mirror planes designed to reflect the sun and cast light into the 17th-century courtyard.

Devlin designed it to be interactive, with recorded readings held every day of Milan design week at 8pm local time as visitors listen from the rotating library.

Es Devlin has designed a rotating library for Milan design week

“The sculpture works as something to walk past and take in as you make your way around it to the library or art museum,” she told Dezeen.

“It also works as a ‘ride’, like a funfair carousel, and also like a show, at night, with an audience gathered to sit and listen to a story, as we all did when we were children,” she continued.

“Each book is a portal for visitors into each writer’s body of work and ideas.”

The installation sits in the Cortile d’Honore courtyard in Pinacoteca di Brera

She hoped the installation would draw attention to the Cortile d’Honore courtyard inside the Pinacoteca di Brera, with its revolving design giving visitors an unusual view of the space.

“The work also functions as a pavilion, a meeting place,” she explained. “It could also be viewed as an observatory, a place to sit and observe the surrounding architecture of the Cortile d’Honore and its statues and shadows as you slowly rotate.”

“Any of these modes of interaction adds life to the work. I think really that all works of art could be called participatory and ‘immersive’: by listening to a piece of music or viewing a painting or reading a book, you are immersed as a participant in the life of that work of art.”

The Library of Light holds 3,000 books

Design fair Salone del Mobile commissioned the piece with the 3,000 books on display chosen and donated by Italian publishing house Feltrinelli to go with the fair’s theme, Thought for Humans.

At the fair, Devlin read from books by authors including Adrienne Rich, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Octavia E Butler.

She also read a work by 18th-century mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, whose statue is the only one of a woman scholar in the Cortile d’Honore.

The piece also featured recorded readings by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who read The Order of Time by physicist Carlo Rovelli. The readings were scored by a composition by British musicians Polyphonia with a solo violin.

Devlin calls libraries a “vital emergency service”

To Devlin, libraries are more important than ever, despite many of us now finding most of our information online rather than in physical books.

“At this moment, when we are algorithmically fed more of what we already know, and guided to view the world through ever more refined versions of our own point of view, I believe libraries constitute vital emergency services: a day spent reading a range of points of view could be described as urgent care for our ailing ability to see through the eyes of others,” she said.

“Without this capacity, I believe our societies and our species become more fragile, and ultimately more prone to extinction.”

The library hosted readings and music events

Other installations and works on show at Milan design week include a pop-up bar that doubles as a “nocturnal gallery” and a Marcel Breuer chair reimagined by designer Jil Sander.

The photography is by Monica Spezia.

Library of Light is at Pinacoteca di Brera from 7 to 21 April. See our Milan design week 2025 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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