AADL x E.LIBERTY:

from Collin Garnett - Design Portfolio

SOCIAL FUTURES: A SEED

Scenes From The District Library

Fall 2021 Institutions Studio, Ann Arbor, MI critics Julia McMorrough collaborators Independent curriculum

Project

This project reimagines the contexts and roles in which institutional buildings can operate. The project dissects this role within the urban fabric of a mid-sized American city.

The way in which the Library engages with its civic contexts is perhaps the most pressing question regarding its own function within communities. This institution has historically transformed its traditional programmatic considerations in response to considerations for the future, as can be seen in such examples as the Seattle Public Library. Today, we see alternative programming inhabiting the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL); technology lending programs, art lending programs, community meeting rooms, hallways being used as makeshift galleries, and educational makerspaces conducting seminars.

Even with its forward thinking interior program, AADL remains a monolith from a bygone era, surrounded by pavement and embedded in an inactive urban corridor. Despite being sandwiched between a major pedestrian corridor on E. Liberty Street, a massive bike lane development on E. William Street, and a transit hub and bus station immediately to the west, the superblock remains unactivated. The current library doesn’t ask the passing cyclist to pull off and stop for a spell, it doesn’t beckon to the window shoppers on E. Liberty, and it doesn’t pay respect to the myriad buses passing its doorstep every hour.

Scenes From the District Library radically reimagines Ann Arbor’s latent institutions, taking forward thinking programs and combining them with increased access and engagement with site. Further, it takes the next step in the evolution of these alternative programs, asking: what are possible future roles for this institution to play in the ever expanding civic realm?