| Emerging digital media are dramatically changing the accessibility to and security of the written word. They are also changing the relationship between readers and writers, between a private reading and a public discourse. Increased access to information creates opportunities for new forms of expression such as chat rooms and the electronic novel, but digital media also create a new form of illiteracy; electronically-transmitted information is available only to those with access to a computer terminal and the requisite skills to use it. Simultaneous with these changes, public educational space in schools and community centres is being eroded by decreasing budgets and increasing commercialization. The public library is forced to replace other learning institutions, to become a place not only where books are warehoused, but also where the public can learn to access them, to read them and to discuss them, in all their new and existing forms. Begun as a response to the role of new media, the thesis offers a reconsideration of an urban, public institution, central to the health of a democracy: the library. The design explores the spatial complexity and material richness necessary to meet the functional program requirements of a 100,000 square foot central library. The public space surrounding the existing Memorial Library in Halifax, Canada, is reconfigured through a new building on the same site, bounded by Brunswick Street, Grafton Street and Spring Garden Road. The library is organized around an exterior courtyard and three main gathering spaces: an auditorium, a reading room and a main hall. Each of them maximizes accessibility and openness. |