The Room:
Library as a context, the room is where knowledge is being collected, contained, arranged, and shared.
There is constant conflict in hierarchy between the objects and the users.
The librarian, as a keeper and organiser of the room, balances and orders biased conditions, yet during the process becoming additional factor of hierarchy.
What architectural elements within the room create hierarchy? ... Is it the librarian's desk (it's position, height, size, texture); the uneven distribution of spaces; the verticality; interiority; accessibility; lighting condition?
The distortion and arrangement of these elements determine the hierarchy of the room.
The Universe:
Within the scale of a city, what is the object contained, who are the users, and who is the librarian?
The city shares similar dilemmas with the room: how does one read and treat buildings; how does one (architect?) arrange/organise buildings; how does the public interact with them; in which form and arrangement public space exist within the city?
As explored in the room-scale, the city can be also dissected and reconfigured in search for it's ultimate form of hierarchy (or the absolute non-hierarhcy)... ...
- The form of intrusion (or the disturbance) to the grid (the neutral and generic) needs to be more specified and more aggressively addressed. This will allow introducing the design aspect into the project.
- The notion of space is missing. What can you put into the space; what can you say through the space, in terms of knowledge gathered, making it accessible or inaccessible, have it guarded, etc? How can you talk about the hierarchy of library by the differentiation between the reader, the keeper, and the books spatially?
- Need more inventive types of drawings and models that are in a way not conformed or controlled. Explore through the act of making.
Directions Suggested:
- Inserting other source of libraries, a zoo for example, or the historical relationship between libraries and gardens - collapsing the historical understanding of knowledge and the contemporary understanding of knowledge. What is the pleasure of the library?
- Explore, evaluate, and understand through the manipulation of contents (exaggeration). [Andres] Gursky the precedent and the grid, then compare the two super-Gurskys.
- Take the understandings and conclusions drawn from the pre-jury works, challenge the original, find where the conflicts (or the disturbances) occur and negotiations made.
- Grid helps defining and measuring things. Take it to the very abstract point. It could give an intangible/invisible structure to access, categorise, and locate information.
The contents are revealed to the street and the facade becomes an internal wall. This inverses the preconceived notion of library - an internalized space, ultimately transforming it into an unbiased, public entity (can be further evaluated). Both the revised interior space and the street - and the relationship between the two - will be reread and reevaluated.
Beinecke Library
