The Soft Library

// Columbia GSAPP // Spring 2011 // Core Studio

The public library is a government-funded institution created in order to offer a space of living to the public. As of 2011, the mission statement of the NYPL emphasizes providing open access to technology and services (rather than providing access to physical books) as a method of strengthening the community and providing a public service to New York. In some sense, the institution of the library wishes to operate like an open pedagogical space for the public, where access is open to everybody, so that certain boundaries or classes can be deferred for the sake of clearing out an open arena or a 'public sphere' of sorts in which activity is possible.

The design of a library, however, operates seemingly in opposition to this desire. A single architect, or small group of architects designs a space for a multitude; the activities of a million come to be designed by a few. Even if spaces for collaboration and interaction, such as gathering spaces or meeting rooms are designed, the solidity of the design and the hardness of the structure already prescribes a given space inside which certain activities are either possible or not possible.

The productive and interesting question that arises out of this issue is then: How do you design an architecture for an institution that wishes to generate an open, free pedagogical/social space, when a design would inevitably start by defining and constraining such a social? Is it possible for a design to be created that encompasses even this dynamic between the architect and the user? To generate an architecture that, in usage, contests the designed nature of the architecture itself? To design an architecture that yields, softly, under change?

(more coming soon)