Hello YouTube, this is frank from Architectural Aesthetics.
In today’s content I present to you a sample undergrad architectural proposal, in which
me and my partner Brian attempted to design a fully digital and bookless library.
The site we had been assigned to is the liberty village in the city of Toronto, and during
our preliminary research we found out that the demographics residing in the liberty village
consists of mainly young families and a young generation of people who were born after the
1980s.
This is the reason that propelled us to make the community library digital and bookless,
because we thought that the young generation is more prone to accepting the concept of
a bookless library, which can be a very shocking idea to many people.
And because this assignment is a joint effort, as you can see that our parti diagram has
been divided in half.
The upper portion was contributed by my partner Brian, in which he was drawing inspiration
from the minimalist art style, and subsequently came up with this geometrical, multilayered
laminated glass facade for our library.
The reason being that we intended to utilize the light distorting ability of this highly
complex facade to add a certain degree of privacy and dynamics to the outlook of our
building.
So that even though the library is entirely made of glass, ironically when it’s being
lit on the inside, the reflection and refraction of the glass facade is going to make the library
look somewhat opaque, rather than completely transparent.
My contribution to this project is a continuation of my understanding of the notion of library.
To elaborate on that, my personal answer to the question, what is a library?
Is actually informed by the process of acquiring knowledge through interacting with an artifact,
as portrayed in various science fiction movies such as 2001, a space odyssey, and the movie
adaptation of H.G.Well’s the time machine.
From which I drew the conclusion that, a library should be the interface, through which we
get to access the compendium of all human knowledge.
Stemming from this parti of library as an interface, we came up with the design of this
reading device, which is essentially an fully interactive touch foil, embedded within plexi
sheets, with overhead LED projectors and retractable furnitures.
And furthermore we're also equipping our reading devices with retractable wheels, so that based
on the specific needs of the end users, they have the liberty of reconfiguring the arrangement
of the reading devices, to form group study carrels that can accommodate 2, 4, and even
6 people, with enough space around them for others to circumvent and maneuver.
As for the programming of our project, we’re taking a page from Sou Fujimoto’s Musashino
library.
Whereas Fujimoto san represented his library as a continuous, spiraling bookshelf, we’re
populating the peripheral area of our library with the aforementioned reading devices to
form a continuous reading nook that can accommodate around 300 readers.
As for the rest of the building, we have a 200 square meter demonstration room at the
very centre, which we intent to rent out to technology related corporations and have them
come here and demonstrate their latest technological products, and take full advantage of the young
community.
We also have a 100 square meter work room, in which we intend our visitors to experience
in first hand the latest technologies, such as the virtual reality headsets.
And in our second panel, you can see that we have a mock up rendering of our library
as seen during the night time, and a couple of interior shots showcasing the plexi reading
devices.
And in our third panel, you can get a sense of where our library is going to be situated
in the site map.
And lastly, we’re branding our project as ‘inter-surface,’ to reiterate the two
focal points of our parti: which is first of all, the multilayered, geometrical surface,
and secondly, the fully interactive, interface.
And this’s our 1 to 100 detailed section model, showcasing the laminated glass facade,
and the serendipitous arrangement of the reading devices.
Alright guys, so that wraps up our sample architectural proposal.
I hope this video had been informative, and I’ll see all of you in the next video, byebye.