A Temporary Library
Read the project blog
The Netherlands has an abundance of unused buildings that sit empty, awaiting a renewed function or purpose. As part of the Great Indoors Award supported by FRAME magazine and Marres, four fellow Design Academy students and I created a temporary library that occupied one of these unoccupied spaces, an office building in Maastricht.
While rethinking the way we use empty space, we also started to question the purpose of a physical library space in the 21st century. Since an almost infinite store of information can be found at our fingertips in an instant, from anywhere in the world, what service can a library provide us now? Our solution was facebooks, the living library.
In our design, the library was a place to access the specific expertise of individuals. Everyone is an expert in something, and personal stories can be invaluable when trying to learn something new.
Therefore, in our library, any visitor can add their own specific knowledge to a vast video library, using a recording booth that moves into public space.
The information can be found online, but at the library, we decided to alter the traditional literary experience: the videos are projected onto blank pages using a modified reading lamp.
On November 3, we debuted the temporary library to an audience on the Great Indoors Design Route in Maastricht, including librarians from the University of Maastricht.
In collaboration with Therese Granlund, Hak Min Lee, Mathieu Frossard, and Alicia Ongay-Perez
The Netherlands has an abundance of unused buildings that sit empty, awaiting a renewed function or purpose. As part of the Great Indoors Award supported by FRAME magazine and Marres, four fellow Design Academy students and I created a temporary library that occupied one of these unoccupied spaces, an office building in Maastricht.
While rethinking the way we use empty space, we also started to question the purpose of a physical library space in the 21st century. Since an almost infinite store of information can be found at our fingertips in an instant, from anywhere in the world, what service can a library provide us now? Our solution was facebooks, the living library.
In our design, the library was a place to access the specific expertise of individuals. Everyone is an expert in something, and personal stories can be invaluable when trying to learn something new.
Therefore, in our library, any visitor can add their own specific knowledge to a vast video library, using a recording booth that moves into public space.
The information can be found online, but at the library, we decided to alter the traditional literary experience: the videos are projected onto blank pages using a modified reading lamp.
On November 3, we debuted the temporary library to an audience on the Great Indoors Design Route in Maastricht, including librarians from the University of Maastricht.
In collaboration with Therese Granlund, Hak Min Lee, Mathieu Frossard, and Alicia Ongay-Perez