This is old, but in case some of you havent seen it...

http://inhabitat.com/new-uk-library-fits-within-a-phone-booth/

MM

Hi all! I finally caught up with all the readings and would like to make a few comments on some of them.

I really enjoyed the interviews, especially one of them – with Dominique Perrault. Perhaps this is not going to be a library-related comment, but rather a very generic one, but I absolutely loved how he said that “architecture is a violent action”. Specifically, he talks about walls and how placing a wall that would separate a space is a “violent action” and almost an intrusion into privacy. I think this statement is absolutely astonishing. Quite often, in studios we tend to forget the importance of a plan. We are often too engaged with the conceptual design and at the end we merely disperse the programmatic elements based on the principle “what can fit where”. I love plans and often become obsessed with its perfect organization. I think that every wall, every door, etc if it’s placed somewhere – there has to be a specific reason why. Only then it would be possible to create a meaningful space that would work both inside and out!

I also loved how he talked about facades and materials (materials, especially). He said that everything in architecture can be considered a material – the client, the site, the context. I think that we tend to forget about this too. It is extremely hard however, to remember all the parts of the design and their importance and incorporate them into the final scheme.

here is a link for inspiration: (matthew this is right up your alley!)

http://feltron.com/

i am sure you have all seen this (his) work at some point, but i find myself going back to it pretty often. so many different ways to interpret information and they look so good! make sure to check out the blog too.

Somol's "Shape"

After a couple of readings of Somol's "12 Reasons to Get Back into Shape" his intentions for the article became a bit more clear. I looked up shape and form in my dictionary, and there really is very little difference between the two according to Webster, but again, after the a couple of readings Somol's distinction is a bit more clear. How I interpreted his thoughts is as follows: Massing and Form are two popular avenues architects take to determine the appearance of a project. Massing is the exterior expression of interior function. Form on the other hand is a response to external forces. This response ultimately affects the organization and appearance of the interior. Somol's argument is that this does not have to be our approach. The exterior "shape" can be used to respond to exterior forces, or to frame the city in a new and better way. Additionally, the interior - although constrained in some way by the limits imposed on it by the exterior envelope - can adhere to its own set of rules. In fact, the divergence of the interior and exterior "shapes" creates the opportunity for some pretty terrific interior spacial volumes, both in size and "shape".

Ultimately, Somol's "shape" approach allows us designers a little more latitude in developing more successful interior and exterior spaces in the built environment. This article has definitely affected my approach to the massing excercise due in 8 hours or so.

The Wall and the Wall Library

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 18^th 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.

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.”

More, or Less?

The common thread I have extracted from this weeks posts is the evolution of media to a more compact form. Presently, most communication occurs in small bits. This is through text messages and emails, news tickers, blogs :), 140-character-limit twitter posts, etc. In other words, there is less depth in the information we receive today. We are bombarded with it, but its kind of like eating a pound of penny-candy, rather than sticking to the guidelines of the food pyramid. Three well-balanced meals a day.

Prosavec's diagram interested me quite a bit. It would be interesting to make this study testing the evolution of writing style over a period of time. The question being: is the way in which we receive our information today affecting literature?

I think digitization of information itself will ultimately effect the interpretation of the written work. If you press command - f in a digitized acrobat file you can search for any word or phrase you can think of. If all media is accessible in this way, research would be change dramatically (and maybe not for good). You could cherry-pick ideas from a vast number of sources misinterpreting information that requires a full chapter of reading to fully understand. This tendency toward expediency that is aided by technology is something that is really beginning to bother me. I think we might be training society of people that are satisfied with a cursory inspection of the Truth. I think that is potential dangerous. Access to "More" can be "Less".

MIT New Media Lab

Since it looks like for most of us the idea of a library staying relevant involves technology, I would urge everyone to try to see MIT's New Media Lab. I think it opened in 2010 and was designed by Fumihiko Maki and its a really great example of a media center that has potential to be incorporated into a modern library. Its obviously much more geared toward technology and student-driven innovation, but if you can tour it (I'm not sure its open to the public, I was lucky to know someone who had access), I recommend it. I think its a good example of using technology to further information and there are some awesome things to see- robots and a ping pong table that tracks where the ball lands every time are a few of the less useful but still cool gadgets. Even if you can't see it in person, here's a great article about it, and you can glimpse it from across the river: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/media-lab-0304

I have also been thinking about ways in which information has been changing recently. There has been a few shakeups such as the Huffington Post being bought by AOL, the merger of Newsweek and people like Keith Olbermann going to Current TV that seem to reflect changing ways in which people view news and informative sites. Not only is it becoming more digitized, but also more consumer- and commentator-driven, which allows everyone to be a part of news and its dissemination. I'm wondering if there's a place for our library designs to incorporate personal feedback into the information...

Cut, Paste, Diagram

Since we are discussing how the library must change with transformations in information technology (at least that’s one branch among many possible discussions), we have to consider how the written word is/will be presented as visual data.  The previous post, “Illuminated Manuscript” reminded me of two projects that specifically manipulate words and the architecture of sentence making in visual forms that are both thought-provoking and unfamiliar.

Stephanie Prosavec's 'Sentence-Length' diagram of "On the Road"

A 2008 project by Stephanie Prosavec explores the potential of sentence structure as visual data.  This project is akin to the genre of data-visualization that architects employ in diagrams.  But in this case, it is relevant to the discussion of how literature might look in the future.  Her diagram of On the Road breaks down the book by sentence length and some generalized subjects.  While this makes for great American literature trivia and some attractive diagrams, does it have any value as literary information?  

For now it is a beautiful, but static, diagram.  But what if you had this visualization for every book (perhaps available as an app for your smartphone)?  And what if you wanted to see how much of a certain book or group of books focused on some key word or subject?  This would be a great tool for visually selecting literature.  If literature is to be digitized, then we can assume that the words themselves could be displayed in an unlimited variety of ways (as data, basically).  If the library of the future is not a warehouse for storing books, perhaps it could be a tool for visually sorting and arranging literature to find patterns of communication that have not been previously apparent.

Jonathon Safran Foer's, Tree of Codes.

The second project is a recently published book by Jonathan Safran Foer called, Tree of Codes.  Like Prosavec, Foer treats a novel and its architecture as data which exists beyond its original composition.  He literally cuts out selected words from an existing book to leave a completely new piece of literature.  The method of physically cutting words out of the book is telling metaphor for our contemporary treatment of written language (think cut and paste word processing).  Foer’s is an example of data extraction and parsing which is a method we might take to cut through the redundancy of written information in contemporary culture.  Regardless of metaphor, this composition is both literary and spatial, which is why it might be helpful for architects in considering future alternatives to digital media and how buildings might function to display them.

As a final thought, I find it interesting that media designers are looking at literature as visual data because it gives literature a second life (or multiple lives).  In other words, digital technology has encouraged us to explore literature beyond its original intend, to look at it structurally and spatially, and to apply to it new frameworks of organization and enjoyment.  Projects like these and the previously noted “Illuminated Manuscript” hint that libraries have potential to be optimized as centers for sifting, restructuring, and displaying literature in novel ways.

Bibliography

One more thing...I will be assembling our bibliography for our publication. I think the majority of our research was done online and I would like to ask everyone to verify the web addresses in their sources. Please make sure they are written on your sheets correctly..its easy to make a mistake when copying them over. Thanks.