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The Garden Library for Refugees and Migrant Workers, Tel Aviv. Yoav, Meiri Architects |
Archdaily has recently posted a project demonstrating how a library might exist beyond its traditional, institutional form. The “garden library” is an example of what I have been interested in, generally, in our early research on the building type---a library that is deployed into the community it serves. It is a form of anti-institution, one that delivers public information outside of a formal, institutional setting.
Besides sharing this project, I also want to discuss how it might relate to Laura and Evan’s comments regarding Perrault’s description of the “wall” as architectonic violence. I will let Archdaily describe the particulars of the garden library, but the fact that the library is reduced entirely to a single book-laden wall provides an interesting corollary to Perrault’s point of view. In this case, the wall services a population on the fringe of society. As with many disenfranchised sectors of modern society, those without access to public information services are usually the ones who are in most need of those entitlements. If the “wall” as Perrault perceives it, as architectural device and symbol, is fundamentally about hierarchy and divisions of power (which is how I interpret Perrault’s sentiment), then the garden library conforms to that metaphor. Ironically, the book-wall of the garden library subverts the “wall’s” stratifying potential by offering an under-serviced community free access to knowledge. This is a thought-provoking twist on the traditional, enclosed library which surely signifies an alternate “attitude towards the quality and status of the wall”.
Just as a matter of trivia, I also find it interesting that the “wall library” was a specific, common library typology until the 18th century (reference “The Library through History”). As noted, it was the over-abundance of printed material that forced the wall library model into obsolescence, as the interior perimeters alone were no longer capable of housing burgeoning collections. Perhaps, the garden library demonstrates how the “wall library” might find a second-life. Instead of delimiting spacious, decorated enclosures, it becomes a free-standing object (of information) within the landscape. The wall library may now be best suited for micro-collections that operate, physically and figuratively, within a field of social and political engagement.
What's really interesting about this example to me, is the fact that the library wall becomes metaphorically and even literally the backdrop for social interaction. Also, if the "book-mobile" once used to give access to physical books because they were not available or affordable to a community, today the role of this type of "library" is almost to act as a "please do touch" museum display.
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I really like the concept of the garden library...it holds a lot of innovative possibilities in how a community (or individuals) interact with and experience their libraries or maybe better described as their "information centers" One way, in which I could see these being useful (along with what you said) is that they could not only de-institutionalize the library, but also de-centralize it. What if a community had several of these "deployed" to various points. I think the concept could also be strenghthened by playing with how people interact with them. For example, what if you put them directly across a path or sidewalk so that people were forced to go around them? (the image above seems as though it is situated off the beaten path).
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