video can’t kill the radio star
Focus in the Future Library Thesis Advisor: Mariana Ibañez
James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize Ben Brady
This thesis explored the tension prevalent in today’s libraries from all scales. Video cannot kill the radio star. De- spite promises of obsolescence of one technology over an- other, we must realize that this is never the case. Video didn’t kill radio. Photography didn’t kill painting. Film didn’t kill the 01 theater and the age of digital information will not kill the book and the library. “ This” doesn’t kill “ that” but rather “ that” may be redefined by “ this.” The library is at a unique place today, facing head-on the power, speed, and mobility of the digital world, while simultaneously being burdened by its own immense physicality. There are multiple causes for the tension prevalent in libraries today. One being an unproductive, sloppy, and forced relationship between digital and physical worlds of the library and the second being the program related to the book and to print media being forced to fight for space in its own home against extraneous programs that have attached themselves to it. The tension between the physical and digital worlds of information has left us with skeuomorphic objects, vestiges of one technology holding us back from an ushering into a new place. The prevalence of these skeuomorphs manifesting themselves in our media today are evidence of us being in a confused time, a time where we will call for the speed and transparency of the digital world, but at the same time still calling for a relationship to the slowness and the warmth commonly associated with libraries.
FUTURE DEPOSITORY
(Conceptual image to left) Currently Harvard University houses more than 9 million books 26 miles from its campus. Remote storage is an endemic problem to almost all large institutional libraries. This project speculates a rather pessimistic view of our society’s future relationship with books. While in this future, the book cannot withstand the economic pressures, central to the city, it must remain in close proximity to the user. So, the future depository finds the cracks of the city. A 10-footwide, 750-foot-tall structure emerges in the spaces between tall buildings. With one small reference desk on the store front, the role of browsing changes drastically while the books, as a symbol of power and knowledge for a city, remain central and are physically and metaphorically lifted above the city.
Skeuomorphic
01 Exterior rendering of library 02 Skeuomorphic side table with site models 02 108
ARCHITECTURE THESIS video can’t kill the radio star
03 - 04 Exterior and interior renderings