What can we understand from the invention and emergence of the local library and its role in a community (its past), how the library is weathering the ongoing disruption of a global pandemic (its present), and what new role it might carve for itself in the quest for greater equity within our communities (its future)?

The (local) library is a typology with specific spatial, organizational, and technical requirements and possibilities. Despite the potentially eradicating effects of issues such as financial strain, digitization, or social distancing, the local library persists - there is still, in most communities, a desire for there to be a there there, a location, a place, a symbol. Within the Institutions studios, the local public library’s cabability for deft and continual re-invention within its contexts will serve as inspiration and touchstone for the assessment and invention of the local library’s future self.

The Institutions studio works to explore and communicate the opportunities for design for reality to be transcendent and visionary, and allows students to research, interrogate, and understand institutional frameworks and resulting architectural approaches. Students are introduced to the basic concepts of life safety and accessibility, and how to treat these as integral considerations in design work that is inclusive and asks productive questions about social justice, equity, and who and what is represented in our institutions. The studio prioritizes the relationship between civic structures and the city, as well as capacity-building in the core competencies of building design, (including organization, accessibility, and diagrammatic structural integration).

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a LibraryJorge Luis Borges

Local LibraryARCH552 Institutions Studio

Instructors

Matias del Campomdelc@umich.eduIan Donaldsoniancd@umich.eduDawn Gilpindgilpin@umich.eduPeter Halquisthalquist@umich.eduPerry Kulperpkulper@umich.eduAnn Luiannlui@umich.eduSteven Mankouchemankouch@umich.eduJulia McMorrough (coordinator)juliamcm@umich.eduNeal Robinsonrbneal@umich.eduJon Rulejonrule@umich.eduChristian Unverzagtcrumich@umich.eduKathy Velikovkvelikov@umich.edu

Fall 2021 | Monday & Thursday 1-6 pmTaubman College of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Michigan

We ask a lot of the public library.

We ask it to keep its contents stocked and sorted; to be warm in winter and cool in summer; to be clean and quiet, welcoming and safe. We ask it to keep up with the times while respecting the past. We ask it to be a sanctuary that is ready to receive us at a moment’s notice. It gives and gives, and we take and take.

It’s a beautiful relationship.

In this studio, we want to channel our inner Veruca Salts, we want to take more, more, more from our library! More books, more movies, more music, more art, more culture, more community, more thoughts, more ideas. We want to find out what more we can borrow and what more it can lend us. We want the whole world, and we want it now. And while we’re at it, we want the local library to make itself a(t) home, to take up more space in the world, to stitch itself into its surrounding fabric. We want it to take as much as it gives.

With more democratization of knowledge in mind, we’ll propose a new downtown library for the city of Ann Arbor. With more access in mind, we’ll check out piazzas, third places, athaneums, automats, laundromats, figures, grounds, Borges, and Nolli maps. With more connection in mind, we’ll look backward in order to move forward. We’ll cut, we’ll fill, we’ll copy, we’ll paste.

All this...and more.

People can walk in off the street, pull the books off the shelf without an employee looking nervously over

their shoulders, and take them home. All you have to do is promise to bring

them back.Don Borchett (Library Confidential)

I want the worldI want the whole world

I want to lock it all up in my pocketIt’s my bar of chocolate

Give it to meNow!

Veruca Salt, ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’

I never read, I just look at pictures.Andy Warhol

give & take

Instructor: Julia McMorrough (ju

liamcm@umich.edu)

COLLIDER! ARCH 552 – Architectural Design (2G1/3G4) Matias del Campo

Designing a Library with Artificial Intelligence Monday, Thursday 1-6pm in person CERN, new Collider Experiment Point (CCEP)

Qionglai, a City of Mountain, River and Tower competition, Industrial Park, Chengdu China, SPAN 2020

In this studio we will be employing Artificial Neural Networks as design method for a library at one of the Experiment Points at CERN’s new Future Circular Collider. CERN is the leading laboratory for particle physics in the world, operating the famous LHC, the Large Hadron Collider. Located in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland, the underground LHC is the largest and most complex machine ever built by humanity. A 17 miles, ring-shaped tunnel is currently used as an accelerator for Hydrogen protons. Crashing Hydrogen protons at near light speed reveal subatomic particles that help physicist solve fundamental questions such as “are there extra dimensions?”, “what happened at the beginning of time?” and “what is dark matter?”. The project in this studio will tackle the next step in the expansion of CERN with the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a new circular collider running under the alps and lake Geneva with 62 miles of circumference. An experimental point is a location along the ring that houses the large underground detectors that are able to record the crashes with minute precision. On the ground level a complex infrastructure is necessary to maintain the ongoing experiments. Apart from the massive amount of architecture designed for nonhuman purposes, there is an area at the experiment point that houses the control room, the visitors center and the leisure areas as well as sleep over accommodations for the scientists at work. This studio will zoom in, from the satellite view of the experiment point to the intersection between scientists and visitors, featuring a library as point of communication. Using Artificial Neural Networks, harnessing the power of Big Data, the main task of this studio is in discovering a method to blend landscape and experiment point. Exploring the long tradition of the role of architecture in the alpine setting, ideas of the sublime, and methods of camouflage the studio provides ample opportunity to discuss the efficacy and role of AI in a contemporary setting of architecture design. This studio will work in close collaboration with CERN.

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

Arch 552, Institutions Studio Benevolent Knowledge

Monday + Thursday, 1- 6 pm Fall 2021

pkulper@umich.edu

Library at Alexandria, Egypt, 3rd century BCE

Benevolent Knowledge… Alternative Fictions Introduction Architecture must be generous. Benevolent. And spatial education should open your eyes and minds to what is philosophically, conceptually, technologically, materially and representationally possible. Inclusive conversations are critical. Framing Benevolent Knowledge is about: relational structuring; increasing form specificity; developing transference skills; and making extraordinary work. A local library will be the vehicle to tickle those aspirations. Historically, libraries have been imporant cultural institutions, and centers of knowledge, globally. They are home to literary works, and other forms of media including films, cd’s, maps, e-books, and databases. One of the earliest cultural forms, they emerged when the first civilizations started keeping records, nearly 5,000 years ago. While changing in disposition, formation and content, they remain great metaphorical memory theaters, in the history of civilization. We know a library when we’re in one. But, a library is not a thing. Typologically, yes, but relationally, no. In Benevolent Knowledge, we will consider ‘it’ an assembly of relations, temporally structured, of which an architectural expression, is part of the story. We will get under the metaphorical hood of the typology, moving between structural and specific learning, looking to become more effective cultural agents, while contributing to the cultural imaginary. We will operate like a versatile think-tank, looking for the most invested, curious and motivated cohort. We will capitalize on rifts and complete explosions in educational assumptions. We will augment, reroute and if necessary abandon values inscribed in architectural education, from who’s included, to what’s accepted, and how things are learned. We will nurture multiple value structures, intense curiosities, and a collective studio culture. Conceptual, methodological and representational broadening, increased strategic range, and metaphorical amateurs, detectives and acupuncturists, will lie nearby. Learning ambitions include: relational thinking/ structuring; designing the discipline for your approach; establishing the scope of your work; and form specificity. The content is tailored per student, and techniques and means of working include varied representations, constructs, hybrids, composites and animations. 14 design methods will also be exposed, and some, worked with. Equity, access, institutional rerouting, and environmental considerations will be on the metaphorical operating table. Structure Three projects, 7- 10 days each, will initiate the term. These, followed by Benevolent Knowledge. The three are framed to accomplish a number of things: to get out of the gates and produce work quickly; to examine libraries, typologically, through design research; to advance formal, material, design methods and representation skills; and to work in highly varied situations. All three will leverage a library’ish, programmatically. The first, ‘Rules, Delivered’ will foreground working syntactically, that is through kinds of rule sets, enabling formal and material development, and will be ‘sited’ in a painting image. The second ‘World Building’, will work through appropriation, essentially kit bashing, using found digital models to build worlds in worlds. This one sited in an augmented x, y, z, situation. In the third, ‘Acupunctural Probes’, each of you will work with a different site: Great Wall of China; Versailles; Tiananmen Square; Chernobyl; the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Pacific Trash Gyre, etc. You will intervene, with a library’ish kit, acting like acupuncturists, genetically splicing a library, structurally, into one of these charged sites. These three works comprise the first month, and will: ground our understanding about libraries; establish a discipline for an approach to work; enable the production highly varied, versatile, dexterous, work. Of the highest quality. The final work, Benevolent Knowledge, is 10 weeks. Critical issues exposed in the first three projects, enlarged scopes, and provocative means for working, will get ramped up. Considerations about; equity, diversity and inclusion; animal, plant and weather worlds; food; collections and taxonomies; split sites and split temporalities; movement between static and moving, changing, morphing spatial elements; and provocative means of working, will populate our realms. Each student will make their own work, a library’ish, with shared topics, conversations and deep curiosities coursing through the studio. Today’s public libraries must function at many levels, scales and with varied audience constructions. They must be seen as exemplifying hope and cultural grounding. Benevolent Knowledge will knock on relevant, discovered and unknowable doors, on the hunt for maximizing the generosity, of the deep, historical, cultural, rhetorical and spatial potential of libraries, towards a broadened, optimistic and benevolent cultural imaginary. Page One of 1, Arch 552, Institutions Studio, Univ of Mich, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, One Page Brief, Fall 2021, P Kulper

Arch 552:F2021 Institutions Studio Class Tu + F 1:00-6:00 Professor Steven Mankouche Office hrs. by appointment mankouch@umich.edu

Material Ornament Study A507W19

DecorServentur

Between1883and1929atotalof2,509Carnegielibrarieswerebuiltaroundtheworldbringingknowledgetopeopleofallkinds.Thisnineteenthcenturylibrarymodelwasoneofdistributedknowledge.However,“Theideathatabuildingwouldbethepanaceatocureallofsociety'sills,theyargued,wassimplynotsustainable”,wassaidbycriticsofCarnegie’slibraries(Wikipedia).BecauseCarnegieonlyfinancedbuildingsratherthantheirstaffing,maintenanceorbooks,muchofthecritiquewasaimedatornatenessoftheedifices.Whatwasinquestionwasnotthevalueofknowledge,itwasthevalueofarchitecture.Todaylibrariesaresomuchmorethanrepositoriesofknowledge,theyareplacesforcommunity,refuge,civicandpoliticalcongregation,etc.Ifthatisthecasehowcantheyrepresentacommunityormultiplecommunities?Whiledesigningalibrarythisstudiowillfocuslessonformandmoreonarchitecturalornament,it’smaterialproductionprocessandthedevelopmentofalexiconforitsuse.Whatornamentgivesusthatoftenformdoesnot,ismeaningandpossiblyamethodforphysicalizingcivicidentity.AsIhaveachildthatistooyoungtobevaccinated,thisstudiowillbeconductedremotelyoroutdoorsuntilheisvaccinated(hopefullysometimethisfall).

L O C A L L I B R A R Y

Neal RobinsonI n s t r u c t o r

ARCH 552: I N S T I T U T I O N S S T U D I O F L 2 0 21 _ M , T H 1 p m - 6 : p m I n -S i t u / O n l i n e

C O O K E D B O O K

C o o k – t o a l t e r t h e a c c o u n t ( i n g ) o f

Tr a d i t i o n a l l y , m o s t h ea d e d t o t h e l i b r a r y s e e k i n g t o s u p p l e m e n t t h e i r k n o w l e d g e ba s e . W h e t h e r a n a l o g , d i g i ta l , o r l i v e , t h e l i b r a r y p r o v i d e d t o o l s a n d o r ga n i z a t i o n t o w a r d f u l f i l l i n g t h i s g o a l a n d t h e “ b o o k ” p e r f o r m e d b o t h a s t h e s y m b o l i c a n d a c t u a l v e h i c l e f o r t h e c o n v e y a n c e o f t h e “ a u t h o r i ta t i v e .”

H o w e v e r, t i m e r e n d e r s m o s t c l a i m s m u te. W h e t h e r b y r e v e l a t i o n o r r ea s s e s s m e n t , b o o k s o f k n o w l e d g e s l o w l y f i n d f r i e n d s w i t h ta w d r y r o m a n c e d ia r i e s o r g e t l a b e l e d w i t h t h e d e m o r a l i z i n g “ F ” w o r d . ( f i c t i o n ) . U s e f u l o n c e , b u t n o w p a i n f u l l y c u r i o u s a n d c u t e .

N o ta b l y , w o r k s d o c u m e n t i n g e x p e r i e n c e t e n d t o s u r v i v e a n d r e m a i n i n c i r c u l a t i o n . Th e y t e s t i f y t h a t t h e r ea l s t r e n g t h o f l i b r a r i e s i s t h e i r a b i l i t y t o o r ga n i z e e x p e r i e n c e s , n o t i n f o r m a t i o n .

D i c t i o n a r i e s a r e “ d ea d ” . Th e Th e s a u r u s i s w h e r e i t ’s a t .

B e g i n n i n g w i t h B o r g e s ’ , “ G a r d e n o f Fo r k i n g Pa t h s ” , a n d m o v i n g t h r o u g h “ Th e B o o k o f S a n d ” a n d “ Th e A g e o f W i r e a n d S t r i n g , ” w e w i l l e x p l o r e m e t h o d s o f “ i n d e x i n g ” , “ c a ta l o g i n g ” , “ r e c o r d i n g ” a n d t h e i r a n t i t h e t i c a l c o u n t e r p a r t s i n s o m u c h a s t h e y a c t i v e l y b ia s w h a t w e t h i n k w e k n o w. C O O K ( e d ) B O O K w i l l f i n d b o t h f o r m a l a n d s i t u a t i o n a l e m p a t h i e s w i t h t h e s e d i v e r s e s t r a t e g i e s a n d w i l l p r o p o s e b o t h m a d d e n i n g l y f o r m a l a n d i n c e n d ia r y p r a g m a t i c s f o r p r i o r i t i z i n g t h e r e c o r d i n g a n d p r o j e c t i o n o f t h e i m a g i n e d h u m a n c o n d i t i o n .

S t r u c t u r e m a t t e r s .

Image: Library book “microwaved” by patron in order to kill the COVID-19 virus. KentDistrictLibrary,Kent,MI

BB

Libraries are much more than books. They are social spaces and cornerstones of communities. Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist/philanthropist who helped establish over 3000 libraries across the United States, believed libraries to be the ‘palace of the people’. A space that would enable individuals to reach their full potential through the resources they offered. While Carnegie referred to the intellectual material that books provided, todays libraries have had to adapt to a society beyond books.

The Beyond Books Studio revisits the contents of the library as a changing institution and its necessity for alternative borrowed objects in the community. The image of the stacks, endless rows of printed knowledge, is but a poster child for what these spaces hold. Community based media and fab labs have begun to fill a needed void. Open to the public, they provide equitable access to the tools, knowledge, and the financial means to educate, innovate and invent using technology and digital fabrication. Libraries too have begun to incorporate these assets into their collections, a necessary step to maintain relevancy in the community.

This section invites students to propose an extension to Ann Arbor’s Downtown Library location that responds to a constantly changing technological world beyond books. As we move towards more sophisticated systems of automation it is important too that what we design, from algorithms to architecture, has human behavior, social understanding, and ethics at its core. The studio’s proposals will speculate on the future of spatial needs for a tech-driven society working in digital media, fabrication, and extended realities.

University of Michigan Taubman College ARCH552|Institutions Fall 2021

Beyond Books:Techno-

ProgressiveCollections

Jonathan RuleM + TH1:00-6:00

Temple University Book Bot - Stantec + Snohetta

This studio takes the position that rather than being a stable institution whose elements and services are certain, the library – and particularly the local or branch library – is a continually evolving entity and social infrastructure that often functions as much more than a collection of knowledge and book lending.

The studio will take an interest in the library conceived as an institution that is iterative and experimental; part of a relational and intersubjective web of community members, collections of things, spaces, and practices of sharing; composed of structures and kits of parts with varying durations and lifespans, where new services and means of service can be incubated and tested; a cultural actor and social infrastructure that is both situated in place and distributed in time and space.

We will operate via a paradigm of radical reuse, multifunction, and aberrant material ecologies to propose an adaptation and expansion of the Bowen Branch Library in Detroit’s Mexicantown. Closed since the start of the pandemic, this historic building and allied urban spaces will be re-imagined and re-imaged, re-programmed and re-coded, re-energized and re-formulated.

The ethos and working methodology of the studio will be to embrace collective knowledge production, sharing, borrowing, and lending. As a group, we will spend the first weeks of the studio developing a repository of precedents, site information, and programmatic models. Individual proposals will be iteratively developed at multiple scales of investigation.

RADICAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE / LIBRARY +

TAUBMAN COLLEGE OF ARCHITETURE + URBAN PLANNING

ARCH552 INSTITUTIONS STUDIO F2021

INSTRUCTOR: KATHY VELIKOV kvelikov@umich.edu

M/TH 1PM-6PM IN PERSON/HYBRID

IDEAS

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Detroit Public Library Bookmobile (date unknown)

Haus Rucker-Co (1972)

THE POLYPHONIC FIELD OF BABEL

ITEOTA: Marshmallow Laser Feast

Institution Studio Arch 552 - 2G1/3G4M + Th 1pm-6pmInstructor: Dawn Gilpin, dgilpin@umich.edu

Architecture is but the distance between ones’ position in space relative to the celestial and terrestrial and the inter-lacing of public space and institutional formation in what constitutes civilized space. Somewhere between the viscera of matter and the ephemera of media, architectural production in the early 21st century is accountable for new con-ceptions of social-civic enterprise.

This studio explores the potential of architectural enterprise, the many voices involved in its production, and new spac-es for the social-civic body as it relates to the portal or threshold to other worlds via technology and the architectures of organization, categorization and distribution. Operating at multiple scales of engagement from the imagination to the object as threshold to other worlds and experiences. The Tower of Babel and The Library of Alexandria frame and stage a mirror to society, often triggering acts of con-testation within the social-civic body. From acts of anarchy, to adherence to codes of ethical conduct, architecture is located between where these oppositions collide. The studio develops parallel methodologies in notational and the visceral that enable the range of locating and acting on architectural atmospheres and worldmaking within the political contours of time.

A library is a focal point, a sacred place to a community; and its sacredness is its accessibility, its publicness. It’s everybody’s place. Ursula K. Le GuinAr

Making Sense

A R C H 5 5 2 I N ST I T U T I O N S ST U D I O FA L L 2 0 2 1

COURSE INFORMATION

Meeting Times: Mon/Thu 1-6pm, in-person/hybridLocation: 3100 A&AB & Zoom Instructor: Peter Halquist (halquist@umich.edu)

Can the public library re-establish itself as a vibrant place of inhabitation and activity, when so many of the original functions of the library are already subsumed into the frictionless, but lonely depths of our ever-expanding digital world?

Answering with an optimistic yes, the Making Sense studio section posits a revitalization and rethinking of the public library. The “sympathetic library”, where architecture seeks attunement with the audience, will be the focus of this studio. To this end we’ll turn, and return, to this simple notion: that the built-environment we inhabit profoundly influences how we feel, which in turn influences how we act.

Every one of us has felt discomfort in a public space before. Whether we found that space too loud or too quiet, too bright or too dark, too spacious or too cramped, too hot or too cold...etc. While these simple dichotomies fail to capture the nuances of spatial experience–nor do they give insight into how we reach these conclusions–they can nonetheless inform how we begin to think about how our surroundings affect us. This studio proposes that the future of the public library depends more on how people feel about spending time in that space, and less on what information we have access therin. For centuries, architects have manipulated sensorial properties of space such as texture, form, light, acoustics, and atmosphere, but there is much contemporary insight into these relationships that has yet to be incorporated into how we shape space.

Speculative AND Real The work in this studio will be “real” in the sense that we will act under the collective assumption that we really do want people to experience the spaces we design. It will be speculative in that our work may not affiliate with a conventional visual and programmatic understanding of a library.

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The ideas which inform the work of the studio will be based on rigorous and current research and insight in fields such as: environmental psychology, spatial cognition, psychophysiology, psychogeography, disability theory, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. Participants in this studio will survey this landscape, choosing specific topics and areas of interest upon which to conceptually root their designs. Participants will study existing architectural works–library and other. Visits to sites, as well as limited interactions with experts in relevant fields, will inform the work of the studio to the extent possible under the evolving circumstances of the pandemic. We will also seek an experiential understanding of how our surroundings personally affect us.

The public library, as an institution, exists mostly outside the transactional and predatory norms of consumer culture. Furthermore, the spaces within a library seek to enable some of the most delicate cognitive and social processes that we as humans engage in. Participants in this studio will take-on the notion that the most vital role for a public library is to be inclusive of the broadest constituency of persons, with the common goal of enabling specific social and learning experiences. To that end, we’ll seek to design sensorially attuned environments that foster internal states such as concentration, relaxation, and comfort; physiological states that so many of our public environments, including libraries, fall far short of achieving for many persons. These qualities make the library a fitting typology–a “safe space”–in which to incorporate insight into how individuals perceive and respond to their surroundings. It is worth noting that utilizing some of these insights in a different context, for instance in a place of commercial or less-public use, might be problematic (context matters!).

The central notion here may come across as relatively obvious: that the built environment has a profound effect on human behavior, emotional states, and physiology. However, in-practice, designers often pay little attention to deeper understandings of these relationships. The idea that we, as designers, elevate this emerging understanding to the same level of importance that we place on issues of life safety, aesthetics, and building performance, is not yet well established in our profession. This is understandable, as there are many complex factors for a designer(s) to balance in a project. Perhaps we can, and should, do more. To date, the most dominant examples of design work which incorporate this sympathetic, and evidence-based approach, are seen in patient-centered healthcare environments; in educational settings for individuals who present with environmental sensitivities; and in product design and marketing. Fortunately, there is much scholarship–as well as established academic fields–that we can look to for insight and guidance.

Taubman College of Architecture + Urban PlanningARCH 552 Institutions Fall 2021Instructor: Ann Lui, AIAannlui@umich.eduM/Th 1pm-6pm In Person/Hybrid

Built in 2015, Chicago’s Chinatown branch public library is one of the most vis-ited and used libraries in the Chicago Public Library system. The new building, designed by SOM, serves as a community anchor as well as a repository of books and other media. However, since its design and construction, a series of new libraries have opened in Chicago which build on a “private-public” part-nership model, combining CPL branches with privately-developed affordable housing. Can the “private-public” model challenge us to reenvision the China-town Branch of the Chicago Public Library?

This studio investigates the idea of Library Plus, challenging students to design a library in combination with a small retail or community space that emerges from neighborhood-specific research. Consider: a library with a boba shop, a community organizing HQ, or a museum of immigrant stories. By connecting to the many ground-floor level commercial spaces in the neigh-borhood, this studio explores a new model of “library plus” through commin-gled programming.

This studio will situate the Chinatown branch library site at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Students will learn from community members and orga-nizations about the complex history of Chicago’s Chinatown, from its origins during the Chinese Exclusion Act to its presentation as a tourist attract in the 1960s to today’s multi-layered uses. This engagement will occur through in-dependent and group research, reading “salons”, Zoom lectures, as well as an in-person field trip to visit with the neighborhood during the semester.

Throughout, this studio will be organized around the idea of mixed media collage as a design approach. Drawing from the writing and thinking of Arjun Appadurai, who explores the construction of immigrant and cultural identity through different forms of media, this studio will be a study in overlay, mash-up, and juxtaposition. Extending the metaphor of Library Plus from program-ming to design, students will generate spatial and aesthetic approaches by bringing together artifacts of research, community engagement, and personal memory—including building parts, films, books, historical photographs, and music—to generate a design for a new library that embodies a plurality of interpretations and uses.

LIBRARY PLUS New Mashups for Chicago’s Chinatown Branch Public Library

STACKED____

A552 Institutions Studio | FALL 2021Ian Donaldson | iancd@umich.edu

mon/thurs 1-6pm in-person+hybrid

Detroit Public Library Main Branch, Cass Gilbert Architects, 1918

This studio asks students to cast aside nostalgia to critically consider the scale and premise of the Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library. We will rethink civic institutionality today to reconsider the library of the future, breaking down typological orthodoxies. By STACKing, layering, carving or sculpting we will organize future spatial possibilities into/through/onto the existing library framework as a new civic morphology.

Studio readings and ideological underpinnings will feature: Patrick Bouchain, Gilles Clement, Claire Bishop, Jacques Ranciere, Spatial Agency and Pier Vittorio Aureli and others...

The public library of today has evolved beyond its typological role as a repository of knowledge. The Detroit Public Library already engages a mission that was once the primary purview of a variety of social services. In this city, access to public services and resources in proximity to the city center needs protecting. However, there is intense pressure on this institution as 17 of 21 library branch face closure, further reducing access to public space in a city paradoxically littered with open space.

Students will be asked to the analyze the existing building and precedents through close reading while interacting with representatives of the library. Through this systemic analyses of precedents, libraries and also inventive cultural institutions, we will build a body of research and establish a crticial lens with which to view the Classical Cass Gilbert building.

Moving from analysis to design, we will inherit the classical form and reimagine the spatial logic of the building and speculate an organizational premise leading towards an equitable future. Depending on in-person or virtual constraints large scale models or large scale axonometrics will be required to best describe spatial reconfigurations. The final project of the semester will culminate in a selective transgression of the approx. 500,000 square foot library into a STACKED architectural framework that is pluralistic, flexible, generous and equitable.