Freewriting/Verbal Vomit

I have spent a great deal of this weekend thinking about what exactly is going to sell my library to the critics at review. A classmate and I were talking about this while we were drawing plans, and we realized that neither of us had anything special in our libraries that libraries today didn’t already have.

I realized that the thing that is going to make my space special is that it has the ability to change.

1. The space is open to change as it is entirely open (except for the utility wall which houses the restrooms and cafe kitchen and also doubles as blocking the view to the police station)

2. The space changes day-to-day, even hour-by-hour, as movable walls retract and expand to create classrooms. These rooms are either tech-based (basic computer skills to specific program training to small e-business management) or open (craft classes, dance lessons, job training, anything that doesn’t require a computer) and have potential to be six small rooms or one extra large room.

3. The space below houses park space and community gardens,which naturally changes throughout the year, but there is also potential for conversion into retail or for housing farmers’ markets or other public events.

4. The transit aspect encourages the expansion of public transportation as people brought to the site to visit the parks or library must come face-to-face with transit options both entering and leaving the site, which hopefully encourages them to use public transportation as well as interact with their friends and neighbors.

Donuts to Cakes

I’ve finally let go of the original shape of the building; I think I’ve spent entirely too much time trying to fit the program into the shape I originally came up with that it was becoming less of my design intention and more of this perfect donut shaped building. I’ve taken out the central circle, leaving just a plain old ellipse and a ramp that leads up to it, which I’ve now taken and turned onto itself to save space. My classmates joke that now it looks like a cake!

I took a step back and gave more thought to what exactly I wanted to do with my library. I think I was getting too caught up with trying to simply fit program into a space, and fit the space onto the site that I forgot that I’m meant to be designing a library for the future. I took a little break from program elements and all of that and wrote a quick 5-minute blurb on what the concept behind my library is.

 

“Intensification”

This library calls attention to and glorifies the changes that are taking place in the world, and more specifically in Tempe. As people become more aware of the good that public transportation can do, and as more people gravitate towards alternative transportation, the site will become more used as a central hub of transit where hundreds of buses and light rail trains move thousands of people every day. The library respects the site as primarily a transit site, and hovers above commuters, shading and protecting them from the harsh desert sun. The library barely touches the ground, on a part of the site that does not impede commuter circulation, and lures the community inside with a spiraling ramp- a nontraditional entrance to a traditional building. Inside, the library brings a wide array of people together with each other as well as the infinite amount of information found here. Here are traditional stacks, and reading chairs and tables, but as one delves further into the space there are computer classes, digital libraries and production stations; new technology that was once open only to those who could afford it is now placed in the hands of the entire community. The space changes day-to-day with the different classes and programs happening there, but also with the new technology that will be brought to transform this space in the coming months, years and decades.

 

I’m not entirely sold on the word “Intensification” for my 1 word, though, but it is a good starting point. This mystery word needs to describe not only the attention I am bringing to the idea of public transportation as a part of the community, but also the attention brought to the budding new technology of today and its use by the community. I have toyed with the words “Glorification”, and “Amplification”, but none of these words has the right kind of connotation I am looking for… I guess I’ll keep searching!

In studio this week we talked about the shape of the building, and how I came about finding such a shape. I originally used the ellipse as an embracing gesture (with the donut) to embrace and welcome commuters, but now that the library has taken a bit of a different angle I feel the ellipse is appropriate because of its lack of corners; it does not have a “front” or a “back”, and thus can be approached at any angle since the main entrance is through the floor!

Midterms!

Midterm reviews were very informative; instead of having a formal review we broke into two sets of groups (one with peers with other sites, and one with peers with our site) and this was incredibly helpful at this point in the design stage. Instead of having outside critics with only a vague insight into our project we were able to receive feedback from people who were as familiar with our project as we were. My peers were quite good at calling out some of the issues I was having with the library.

One issue that came up with both groups was that there was a lack of vantage for the librarian at the front desk. Because of the big hole in the middle of the space, the librarian can really only keep an eye on a quarter of the total space!

Another issue was that the book drop might be an issue since the library staff will have to keep going down the elevator to pick up books. I don’t think this will be resolved since I Don’t plan on moving the library to the ground floor, but moving the offices to next to the elevator is the next best option, so that once they are up on the library level they do not have to travel far.

A third issue was the ramp; some people had thought that the ramp was too long and outstretched to be a successful and pleasant space.

The organization of the library was an issue as well; my peers thought that it was organized a little haphazardly, and that it seemed a little random (which it was!). I was trying too hard to make it a dynamic space and have a mix of library + community center that I just scrambled the program into where it would fit. It didn’t work out very well, and I ended up with a lot of bottleneck instances, where people would be stuck in a tiny 10ft hallway for some 60 feet. A lot of these issues are from the shape of the building; there is only enough room for so much program in that wide a space!

The parti diagrams (a la BIG) were thought to have concentrated too much on the shading commuters aspect, and not enough on the public space it was defining and how it was being defined. I need to include where the shape of the building is from, as well.

Taking all the new critique into account I am rethinking the feasibility of the donut-shaped plan; I will work with it over the weekend but will have to let it go if it does not end up working out.

Moving Forward!

The interior spaces do not have a start or an end since the library is circular, and so I organized them to be a library (more quiet) on one side and a community space (more loud) on the other. The kids and teens are in the community space since they are louder while the library side has the adult stacks and private reading spaces.

I am quite pleased with where the project is going. I moved the ramp to start at the south side of the site, on the street, but the main entrance is located at the northwest corner, where a road allows for book drops and handicap parking. I also furthered the transportation infrastructure metaphor, which I really like, and made is so that the planters and green spaces direct movement like vehicles in traffic. People are meant to move through the lines and stop at the circles, much like moving through traffic and stopping at roundabouts.

1 Entrance to Rule them All

I am having issues with the book drop/elevator and the main entrance of the library being in two separate places. I am also having trouble, as usual, with the ramp and the rise vs. run of it! After desk crits in studio, I am also reconsidering having the start of the ramp at the north end of the site. While it is best for the topography of the site, it does not address the street and the people coming from other directions than the bus, light rail and parking lot.

The fluidity of the “overpass” is interrupted if I try to turn the ramp; I am struggling trying to address people coming in from the street but also have a ramp in the appropriate location for the site!

I thought for a while that the circular form was holding me back a bit, and tried a rectangular form. I am not terribly fond of it, I must admit. I think that one of the strong points of my concept is that it captures the fluid movement of transportation infrastructure, and while this may be successful in itself it is not the best thing for this site.

On Ramps, Onramps

I’ve returned to the circle idea after grappling with trying different forms; there is something about the fluidity of movement through a round shape that I like for the site. I considered having the library double over itself so that people’s movement terminates at the reading room which is the highest and most silent part of the library. I would imagine the spaces move from more public and loud from the site and the ramp to more private/reflective and quiet at the reading room.

The site itself is organized so as to move people the way a road moves vehicles. As a largely transportation-based site I feel I want to draw attention and a sense of appreciation that we are able to move ourselves so freely from place to place. I basically designed the building structure as a people highway, so it is designed to move people like a freeway overpass. I think the looping movement is really elegant and the ramp becomes a really special way to enter the space.

Ramps Ramps Ramps

I am having a hard time dealing with getting people up to my building when I lift it over the transportation stations since I want the ramp to comply with ADA, and it’s proving to be quite difficult on such a small site. There is not much room to have such a shallow ramp and have it get over the light rail AND the bus. I am considering different ways to find enough space to accommodate the ramp, because I think it’s a really interesting aspect of the project and I don’t want to toss it just yet!

I am considering taking the ramp off of the building entirely and moving the main entrance access to a path that leads off of “A” Mountain, from the trail that is just north of the site. I would then make the east and west end into public park spaces that would engage pedestrians coming to the site from either end. The problem with this is that the entrance is not where all of the people are (transit passengers and drivers and pedestrians alike all arrive onto the site and it does not make much sense to have the entrance so far away from them). I am trying different options besides the round form that I had started with, but I keep finding myself returning to it, for some reason.

Roundabouts

I thought about the site and decided that the most important thing about it is the fact that there are so many commuters passing through here on a daily basis. I want to use the building to somehow protect and shade people waiting for the bus or light rail; If I hook the bus routes to surround the building I can have a continuous loop of a library that will shade waiting commuters.

Iteration 4 (done in studio)

ITERATION 4:

This is the diagrammatic model that I made in studio; it was a quick model to show how I wanted to the building to replace the dinky bus shelters that are on the site now. As a public transportation enthusiast, I am always surprised at how ineffective bus shelters are at some times of the day, especially during the hot AZ summer! I wanted to set the building on piers so that it would shade commuters as well as open up to, and welcome them.

Iterations 1, 2, and 3

From a combination of site analysis as well as past use of the site, I decided fairly early on that I wanted to reorganize the site so that there was more interaction between the building and the transit lines. Last semester, I wrote a paper for our History of Architecture class where we had to bring a famous architect from history to see a present-day project, and I brought Bernini to see this site. He appreciated the building’s efforts in sustainability, but thought that if this was a transportation center that encouraged alternative methods of transportation, it did a lousy job of glorifying said methods by unceremoniously dumping the commuter onto the site, where they never interact with the award-winning parts of the site. (But since I wrote the paper, this is really how I felt!) I wanted to glorify the commuter’s experience on the site by giving them a more poetic entrance onto the site and into the building, instead of concentrating all my efforts on just the building.

My first three iterations concentrate on how to move the bus routes so as to interact more with the building and the light rail, so that everyday commuters have more experience with the building as they move between the buses and the light rail.

ITERATION 1

This deals with bringing the bus lines to wrap around the building, which takes a curved plan in order to match the curve of the bus line and not feel like a rectangle stuffed into a circular hole, since the buses will not take well to turning at a 90 degree angle in such a small space!

ITERATION 2:

This iteration uses the building as a median between the bus and the light rail; I took the bus lines and set them parallel to the rail, and placed the building in between with the intention of having commuters enter the building to pass between the two types of transit.

ITERATION 3:

This iteration attempts to bridge the bus routes so that pedestrians can cross the street without getting in the way of the buses. This is my least favorite one because it does not seem to interact with the site enough; commuters can bypass entering the building by simply jay-walking through the bus lines!

Thoughts: These models are not diagrammatic enough, which they should be this early on in the project. I think I concentrated too much on how the building and site will look instead of showing what on and around the site influenced my decisions. For next time, I will make them more diagrammatic and conceptual instead of more literal, and I would also like to look at other ways in which the building can interact with the site and the commuters.