Deposits (Knowledge Logistics)

In the 1961 competition for the National Library of Buenos Aires, the book deposit emerged for the first time as a foundational element in the architectural definition of the library. The project by Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia D. Cazzaniga translated this centrality into a semi-automated subterranean infrastructure designed for the preservation, circulation, and future expansion of the bibliographic collection, configuring the deposit as an autonomous and generative device. Through a genealogy of the invisible infrastructures of knowledge – freight elevators, conveyor systems, and logistical apparatuses – this article investigates the deposit as an implicit architecture capable of redefining the spatial, material, and symbolic conditions of contemporary knowledge production and transmission.