Studio Daniels is a first year graduate core studio at Columbia University GSAPP.
The premise of the studio is to rethink the typology of the library in the contemporary society whose means of information has drastically changed due to new network based collective intelligence along with coexistence of the tactility based analog information. The studio methodology begins with an analysis of the limits of public information/education, which are “Controversies”, to study how the limits influence spatial conditions. Within this framework of the studio methodology, students have developed to impose the intelligence to the system of architecture such as “New Paradigm of the threshold system to suggest new interactivity”, “Bringing new territories to the existing typology to investigate emergent phenomena”, “Binary logic of information system to manifest the performance based formal logic” and “The system of censorship as a machine of morphogenesis to generate a new kind of space”. Such intelligent systems embody the integrated logics of architecture, which are the logic of aesthetic, logic of structure network system and logic of spatial organization. The logics inherently challenge the meaning and origin of architecture.
Permeated Monument / EMILY E JONES
Critical of the momentum with which society has transitioned from books to digital media as it’s main source of information, this library preserves our waning relationship to the book. In order to make clear that how and where we get our information colors our understanding of it, the building is comprised of two interdependent systems: the monumental book-based library and it’s encroaching digital media counterpart.
ZENGER + HAMILTON LIBRARY_Censorship in Action / MIA ZINNI
In response to the relocation and special treatment given to contoversial material in the New York Public Library, historically and at the present this adjunct mid-town library is to stand as an architectural mechanization of the processes of censorship within the library. Formally playing on the irony of censorship, which ultimately makes material more popular in contrast to its intention. The library’s permanent collection is designed to store material which has been subject to a type of censorship, and present them to the users through varying degrees of accessibility. The additive collection is a process of moving new controversial materials from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Library (Lion’s) over to this library though decisions made within the public forum arenas.
STACK EFFECT: LIBRARY AS TOWER / COURTNEY HUNT (http://www.organelledesign.com/)
This project for a new mid-town library transforms the traditional book search and circulation method into a multi-axis robotic storage and retrieval system pushed to the perimeter of the building. This thickened facade holding the libraries collections is registered from inside and out, constantly shifting in density and pattern as information is accessed. A stacked series of undulating public spaces, bolstered by the automated facades, weaves to the top of the structure, encouraging views and exploration of a range of digital, physical and social media.
Temporal Contextualization/ CHRISTINE NASIR
The library collection is reorganized in chronological order to facilitate the contextualization of information across subjects, with respect to history. The collection volume rises along the z-axis, through time, shifting around assembly-oriented program located in the x and y axes.
Digital Corporeality / RAY HO (www.raymnho.com)
The public library must become a corporeal manifestation of human knowledge, harnessing the vast resources of the internet and digitized human memory. Book stacks are removed and transformed into art galleries, while the bulk of the library is filled with a new, elevated public experience of the digital.
Spatializing the Search : Making the Visible Invisible / TANYA GERSHON
The library of the future seeks to put “The Search” on display, making the invisible visible by spatializing the previously static computer/human interface. Through gesture based technology, visitors engage with the infrastructure in an exchange that guides them to their search by circulating through the library. The library becomes a center of information, accessibility and a beacon of interactivity.
Information Commons / Rebecca Marriott
The Information Commons is a language and culture library in Downtown Manhattan, between Chinatown and Soho. A grand staircase continues from the sidewalk and weaves through the library, pulling the active, diverse street life of the neighborhood into the learning and community spaces. The library’s intention is to foster community engagement and cultural exploration by guiding visitors from spaces of individual activity to spaces of communal activity.
