Architects on Architecture

So I finally got around to reading the Toyo Ito Wiel Arets discussion of his library project and a few of his answers hit home for me. He mentions that he felt up until the Sendai Mediatheque that he designed in either the transparent-cubic or the fluid-organic, but in that project he was able to unite the two concepts. I have been thinking how after doing the keyword chart for the Library Index that I would ultimately like to use as many of those ideas as possible, within programmatic reason. It was inspiring to hear him say that he believes his integration was successful.

The interview also mentions that the original contest required a public library, an art gallery, a film and media center, and an information center. These are several of the uses I would like to incorporate into my program, which ties in nicely with the science and health aspects that the surrounding environs contribute. Lastly, I found it refreshing to hear Ito mention that he changed part of his concept after seeing the building under construction and realizing how integral steel and iron were to his design.

In reading the Perrault excerpt, I felt more vindicated in my choice of site. I think many of us, especially on the new wave of sustainable design, feel that we need to ameliorate our design with the surrounding landscape, sometimes at the expense of the overall concept. I like Perrault's choice of "violent" as a description of architecture. I think in my current site I need to embrace the challenge of the traffic congestion and difficult pedestrian access in light of the fact that this site, for me, presents unending possibilities and really rich potential to link to some other centers of human exploration and knowledge (the Science Museum and hospital).

The Library Index

The members of the informative platform(s) studio team present: the Library Index.

The material presented in this catalogue was collected and analyzed on the occasion of the studio. The pool of the selected 40 projects of this critical research is not meant to necessarily represent the most typical examples of built and unbuilt libraries of the last 150 years, but rather showcase a selective cross section of the evolutionary history of the library typology since the mid-19th century. Thus, the projects were selected for inclusion primarily on the basis of their contribution to the challenging of the typology in one way or another.

Each member of the studio researched individually five precedents, collected the visual material, outlined the main concepts and innovations, provided keywords and even “assessed” each project in more contemporary and ill-defined terms as “iconicity”. Following a series of collective presentations, redistribution of material and constant feedback between the team, a series of diagrams was produced in order to visualize comparative analyses on a series of aspects (such as scale, structure, materiality, circulation and geographic location among others) in an communicative and engaging way.

In that sense, the Library Index is a result of a purely collective effort and as such its raison d’être is not limited to that of a reference book for the design part of studio, but rather invite both designers and the public to re-imagine together the new role of the library.

The Library Index, QR code hyperlink to the full online edition.

Caption contest

Dear Library exprets,

this is your time to show your undeniable eloquence when it comes to talking libraries. Make a caption for this evocative photo a knowledge-thirsty "red army" marching through the dizzy-fying, high-techy Biblioteca Vasconcelos in Mexico City (architect: Alberto Kalach), today's Editor’s Pick on Architizer, 

You can participate with your captions here by tomorrow (Feb 18).

p.s. The Library Index is baking... compiling the last pieces left out. 

Library Science

In response to Laura's post, I agree that learning more about what Library Science is and what Librarians learn in school would help a lot with programming. I know from working with people who are going through the Simmons program currently and in the recent past the course work is moving to a lot of online media posting through Wiki's and many libraries are now using Flickr pages to show new books and link visually to books in their collection as well as show some works in their collection digitally online. Our library here at the BAC has a wiki page for staff as well as a flickr page which links from the catalog as well as our own digital image database. These are just a few ways Libraries are transforming their practices to adapt to new technologies.

Here is an article about the digital art display of library statistics at the Seattle Library. (http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_news_detail&cid=1126554289343 ) I agree with the following quote; "People tend to gaze at it for minutes at a time," Hoetzlein said. "They seem to be mesmerized. Some people are really excited that it's real data." When I visited there was a group of people just watching the data change on screen. I am pretty certain that library statistics have ever been exciting before this installation.

Credibility of Information

In reading all these posts and trying to get a better understanding of the role of libraries today and in the future I keep thinking about the credibility of the information source. Take for example the WolframAlpha Computational Knowlege Engine (http://www.wolframalpha.com/). I'm sure you've all seen it and used it with astonishing results. While intriguing, it's actually a little scary for me. It makes me wonder how the system works and how tools like this are reflective of the way we will mine for quick answers to complex questions in the age of wikis and search engines.

 

This comes at the last minute, but I wanted to post a draft of the title page for your review.  I kept it fairly simple (our studio information and contact data are listed on the back cover).  Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Library Science

Hi everyone,

Building off Matthew's post from earlier, I thought it would be beneficial to look up what a library science degree actually entails. I know Simmons College here in Boston has an excellent program, which they call the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. You can follow the link here: http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/about/index.php. Its extremely useful to see what this entails and how this could shape our programs going ahead. I recommend reading their mission statement, student goals, and the Dean's message, which actually focuses on how legal statutes are effecting library information and personal rights.

I was especially interested in how they broach the topic of technology and changing information, since their program must have to evolve on a pretty rapid basis to prepare their students. As you can imagine, there are a lot of buzzwords included, such as "accessibility," and "innovation," but they also talk distinctly about the interrelation of information and knowledge, which are words I use pretty interchangeably (at least in this case). They also discuss information management, which I thought was interesting and makes sense with all the varied sources and ways of gathering information out there. Anyway, I plan on doing more research, but I definitely think perusing this could help us nail down preliminary programs and ideas of what we want to focus on in our library design.

The Reader-User-Patron Variants

Variations of the 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931-2008

The future of libraries is undefined and therefore the potential to reinterpret them is virtually unlimited.  I found it interesting that even within the field of library science since 1931, there has been a stated acknowledgement that books, readers, and libraries are in fact evolving.  In 1931, Dr. Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan (1892–1972) published the 5 Laws of Library Science (listed above).  While there is no need to go into the details of each step here, it does seem useful to look at the components of his Laws: books, readers, and libraries.  These laws have been largely embraced by the library professions since their publication and have been modified as the nature of information and its means of delivery have changed.  Later variations (also listed above) show how our perspectives regarding books and readers have changed---they have morphed into media/information and patrons.  Notably, the third component has remained a physical library despite a brief flirtation with its virtual alternative, the Web.

Ramamrita’s ideas on data delivery, storage, and access are interesting and have become fairly orthodox ways of thinking within the field of information science (partially due to the fact that his framework is open-ended and upgradeable within a changing data landscape).  They may provide and interesting point of departure for our discussions about the library’s program and physical form.

Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

One more thing. The link included in this post is to designer Bruce Mau's "Incomplete Manifesto for Growth". You may have seen it. Its a list he's compiled over the years that I find to be very motivating and inspirational. I hope you find it helpful as we move forward with our own designs.

Enjoy!

Also, here's a link to Bruce Mau's website, in case you are curious. Website

Updated Timeline_First Page

Hi everyone,

I've uploaded the first page of the updated timeline...I've tried to incorporate everyone's feedback as best I could...or at least as I interpretted it. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. Please understand that at this point, I can't make major changes...I have to move on to other tasks and just don't have the time.

Also, for the bibliography, please make sure you have all your sources uploaded to dropbox as soon as possible.

Thanks!

The Origin of Species

Ben Fry, On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces, 2009

This post connects to a number of the recent ones and is characteristic of the the non-linear access we can have to knowledge. Thinks of it more as conceptual provocation in a series of projects that alter our traditional perception of very large pieces of information and the visualization of a pretty intense editing process that is usually hard to trace with traditional comparative studies. 

"Ben Fry, well-known for Processing and plenty of other data goodness, announced his most recent piece, On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces, made possible by The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.
The visualization explores the evolution of Charles Darwin's theory of, uh, evolution. It began as a less-defined 150,000-word text in the first edition and grew and developed to a 190,000-word theory in the sixth edition.
Watch where the updates in the text occur over time. Chunks are removed, chunks are added, and words are changed. Blocks are color-coded by edition. Roll over blocks to see the text underneath."

(Via: flowingdata.com, September 7, 2009)

You can watch a the live, interactive demonstration of Ben Fry's "On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces" here. Make sure you use a browser with Java plug-in installed (FireFox works on Mac). You can even play with the slow and fast buttons that change the speed of the visualization. 

Ben Fry had been a guest in the lecture series BRAIN.STORMS at the Harvard GSD last spring and spoke about this project, among others which included a mobile application  for researchers that acts as a browser of the whole human genome. As Fry mentioned, “The idea that we can actually see change over time in a person’s thinking is fascinating. Darwin scholars are of course familiar with this story, but here we can view it directly, both on a macro-level as it animates, or word-by-word as we examine pieces of the text more closely.”