living+library

2009-04-08T12:03:00.000+01:00

A £650 million retail scheme in Leeds, which was set to mark the late Enric Miralles’ English debut, has been mothballed for more than a year
Work has ‘temporarily’ stopped on the much-delayed Trinity Quarter, originally designed by Miralles’ practice EMBT with the Stanley Bragg Partnership (pictured right).
Once complete, the scheme will transform the area around Briggate, Commercial Street, Albion Street and Boar Lane, and will include more than 120 shops. It is currently being delivered as a redesigned version by Chapman Taylor.
Trinity Quarter Developments (TQD), a joint venture between developers Land Securities and Caddick, admitted it had put back the proposed opening of the 93,000m² mall from Easter 2011 to Christmas 2012.
Bob De Barr, development director for TQD, said: ‘Difficult decisions regarding the delivery of the scheme have had to be made in the context of the wider economy. We have thought long and hard about the best way to deliver the scheme and everything suggests that 2012 will be a more appropriate delivery date for all stakeholders.’
Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that Chapman Taylor will shortly submit plans for the ‘multi-million pound remodelling of Albion Street’ neighbouring the Trinity Quarter scheme.

source - http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/leeds-£650-million-trinity-quarter-hits-buffers/5200175.article

Living+Library - Story So Far

2009-03-04T02:35:00.001Z

To be annotated when i've had some kip!

Living+Library Zoning

2009-03-04T02:19:00.002Z

Yellow - Library
Red - Reading Pods
Pink - Archive
Green - Cafe
Blue - Boating Centre
Purple - Community Facilities
Grey - Plant, BOH, Circulation

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth - Part 1

2009-03-03T23:06:00.003Z

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth - Part 2

2009-03-03T23:05:00.001Z

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth - Part 3

2009-03-03T23:04:00.001Z

Joesph Campbell - The Power of Myth - Part 4

2009-03-03T23:03:00.000Z

Facade Concept Image

2009-03-01T22:58:00.003Z

Wordle!

2009-02-20T11:41:00.004Z

InfoSource Spatial Development

2009-02-17T20:56:00.004Z

Entrance foyer sketch with overhead reading pod, quite a few changes to make but thought it was worth posting anyway!

Seven Stories Concept Model

2009-02-16T14:59:00.001Z

Concept 3 - Removing and Replacing The Decay

2009-02-16T14:46:00.001Z

Concept 2 - Removing The Decay And Enveloping The Existing

2009-02-16T14:39:00.003Z

Concept 1 - Demolition of Existing Buildings

2009-02-16T14:29:00.003Z

How Do Children See Libraries?

2009-02-16T13:58:00.009Z

I asked the children at the Rosebank Centre in Lymm what they thought a Library looked like to try and understand how children percieve spaces.

There were some interesting results!

The Ransome Link + Visit to the Arthur Ransome Society

2009-02-16T13:13:00.009Z

A quick visit to the Arthur Ransome Society based at the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal. The society owns a number of Ransome's original books and illustrations.

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds and believed that every child should have the opportunity to read and access books, he also believed that teaching should be carried out through stories of exploration. His books attempted to capture the joys of the outside world and accentuate the aspect of discovery.

With one in every five children in Leeds starting school unable to read, can Ransome's ideal be applied to the 21st Century to try and encorage children to read from a young age?

Model Mooch - Spot the ping pong ball!

2009-01-28T12:28:00.005Z

OMA's competition winning arts centre in Taipei.

Mooch

2009-01-17T21:29:00.003Z

Jan Kaplický Czech architect whose free-form designs revolutionised British building

Deyan Sudjic The Guardian,
Friday 16 January 2009

A model of Future System's controversial design for the Prague's national library. Photograph: Volfik Rene/AP

Jan Kaplický, who has died aged 71, was the Czech architect responsible for some of the most remarkable buildings that Britain has ever seen. Hovering low over the stands at Lord's cricket ground is the press box he built with his former partner, Amanda Levete. It is an otherworldly, entirely unboxy, glossy white disc that seems to have no connection with this earth, or the mundane, muddy preoccupations of everyday building.

And, indeed, it has none. It was made by boatbuilders, and is a small monument to the unshakeable optimism that every real architect must feel, in the face of endless practical difficulties that face them, from cost overruns to cricket correspondents under the impression that by entering something that looked like a flying saucer, they were becoming the victims of an alien abduction. It was their first major project, and it took Kaplický and Levete to the brink of bankruptcy. They were rescued only by becoming, in 1999, the most deserving winners in the entire history of the Stirling prize.

Kaplický designed the Selfridges department store in Birmingham (2003), in the shape of a sensuous free-form iceberg, finished in Yves Klein blue, and studded with silver discs that gave the completed building something of the character of a Courrèges metal dress from the 1960s. It is pierced only by a scattering of windows that gather at pavement level like swooping teardrops. There can be no sharper division between two worlds that utterly fail to meet than the gulf between the dreaming vision of Selfridges, and the gimcrack banality of the rest of the shopping centre around it. They are two worlds that physically touch, but utterly fail to acknowledge each other.

Even more remarkable are all the buildings that Kaplický designed, but which the world will never see - to say nothing of the stream of ideas for solar-powered vehicles, electric cars, jewellery, bikinis and double-decker buses. He came within a handshake of getting to build the French national library in Paris with a design that took the form of a glass canyon bisected by a pedestrian bridge across the Seine. President François Mitterrand took the final decision, and made up his mind that the most conspicuous cultural landmark in Paris should be built by a French architect.

Probably not even Kaplický expected that his house for a helicopter pilot, with legs like a lunar module, and a rooftop landing pad protected by a retractable umbrella, was ever going to get built. Or that his plan for a high rise twice the size of the World Trade Centre in unmistakably phallic form, and finished in pink, was going to get a commercial backer. His designs were part of a constant commentary that he kept up on the short-sightedness of a world that he sometimes saw as conspiring inexplicably to stop him from sharing his altruistic vision of a weightless, effortless, luxurious, solar-fuelled, one-piece, neoprene-lined rocket ride to the future.

His experiences at first hand with the Soviet Union left him wary of political utopias. He wanted to invent a new world, but one in which there would still be room for champagne served in the coolers that he designed for the Ivy, and for gossip in glossy restaurants. He had a languid elegance that utterly contradicted the gloomy pessimism that is an essential part of the Czech national identity. He was particularly fond of the Caprice, for whose former owners he had built a house.

Kaplický's life was fractured by war and totalitarianism. He was born in Prague, the only child of a sculptor and a botanical illustrator. He remembered the German occupation, and the communist takeover, wiping out a vigorous and inventive Czech version of modernism. He was starting to make his way as an independent architect when Soviet tanks bulldozed the Prague spring in 1968. He came to London as a refugee, to find himself in the midst of the glossy world of the King's Road that he had previously only glimpsed through the keyhole of the occasional smuggled copy of Vogue.

He got a job at Denys Lasdun's office, but, given Lasdun's obsession with concrete, there was nowhere less suited to Kaplický's passionate love affair with weightless architecture. He moved to the more congenial setting of Richard Rogers's studio, and he was on the Piano and Rogers team that won the Pompidou competition. He worked with another Czech emigre architect, Eva Jiricná.

Later, he went on to work for Norman Foster. But throughout his time there, Kaplický had another life. He started something that he called Future Systems. It had the kind of ambitious title that suggested Nasa consultancies, and lavishly funded thinktanks, but that at first existed mainly in the minds of Kaplický and his first collaborator, David Nixon. Mainly, but not entirely. Kaplický embarked on an astonishing series of architectural drawings, and montages that mapped out an architecture quite unlike anything else the world had seen. There were projects for robot-built structures in earth orbit, weekend houses like survival capsules that could be helicoptered into position, and malleable interiors. Initially, his drawings suggested a kind of turbo-charged hi-tech that left his former employers, Rogers and Foster, looking earthbound and heavy. But while Kaplický loved machines - everything from pre-war Tatra limousines from Czechoslovakia to lunar landers, and geodesic domes, he was also fascinated by the natural world, by organic form, and the human body.

It was the direction that he took with his submission for the competition for Grand Buildings in Trafalgar Square in the 1980s. The winning design proposed a reconstruction of a dim Edwardian facade. Kaplický, in sharp contrast, suggested a a free-form monocoque structure, its skin penetrated by portholes. Twenty years before the construction of an egg-shaped City Hall for London, he had pointed the way to another kind of architecture.

What turned Future Systems from a brilliant think tank about the world, and allowed it to build the Lord's media centre, and Selfridges, was Kaplický's marriage to Levete. Together they started to turn Kaplický's genius into built form. It was a marriage whose break-up in 2006 placed considerable stress on the practice.

Kaplický was beginning to spend more time in the Czech republic, where he had won a 2007 competition for a new national library in Prague that has yet to be realised, and was working on a concert hall in Brno. He had remarried, in 2007, to the film producer Eliška Fuchsová, and died within hours of the birth of his second child, a daughter.

He is also survived by Josef, the son of his first marriage.

• Jan Kaplický, architect, born 18 April 1937; died 14 January

Daily Mooch (Not necessarily architecture)

2009-01-16T16:09:00.003Z

So I have spent half the day referencing my proposal document and ended up wandering on to youtube (again). I found this amazing video, although the library on york road is a listed building it is a right mess, probably becuase the council cant afford to bring it up to todays standards. I wreckon that there should be tours of buildings like this so as to capture the original beauty before there is nothing left.

Anyway to my point in hand, i thought the fact that they cleaned up the place whilst they were inside was awesome. . take a look.

How do you encourage children to read?

2009-01-15T18:14:00.001Z

Computer-esque books to lure boys

The books are aimed at school children up to the age of nine
Books illustrated with computer- generated images are the latest attempt to get boys to enjoy reading.

Oxford University Press (OUP) claims the "truly boy-friendly" content and structure of its Project X books will appeal to boys up the age of nine.

The books have been tested in 2,000 schools and can be used interactively through CD-Roms and whiteboards.

But critics dismissed the publications as "ghastly" and a shallow attempt to mimic computer games.

The books centre on the character of Max and his friends Cat, Ant and Tiger, who find their watches have the power to make them shrink, opening up a world of adventures.

The friends end up snowboarding on spoons, exploring inside a sandcastle, white-water rafting on pencils and surfing on lolly sticks.

In later books they encounter Dr X, a villain intent on shrinking the whole world.

The friends shrink to an exciting new size

'Ghastly'

Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond books, welcomed the OUP's attempt to write fiction for boys, but questioned the books' reliance on computer images.

"They look absolutely ghastly," he said.

"They're trying to look like computer games and they're trying to get them [boys] to interact with them like a computer.

"The point is that books are different to computers - that's the whole point. If kids want to play with computers, they'll play with computers, not read these stories."

Professor Elaine Millard from the National Association for the Teaching of English said the books were a shallow response to the problem of boys not enjoying reading.

"It's counterproductive - we want them to engage with the text so that they enjoy the pleasure of words.

"The culture is such that it is still accepted, in lots of families, that it's okay for boys not to read.

"What we have to do in schools is get that enthusiasm back for words on the page."

'Gripping' story lines

White-water rafting is just one of their adventures

But Elizabeth Blinkhorn from OUP said the books were aimed specifically at getting boys involved.

"We know that boys are very motivated by facts and 3D images and gripping story lines. There are short chapters to keep them motivated.

"And boys really want to be part of the story and in Project X they are part of the story."

Girls also enjoyed the books and benefitted from boys' increased motivation in reading, she added.

Tony Bradman, lead author of the Project X micro-adventure stories, said the books drew boys in with thriller story lines and science-fiction and plenty of action and adventure.

"It's up to us to present books to them [boys] in a way that's attractive," he said.

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7815268.stm

Living+Library Overview

2009-01-07T13:57:00.002Z

Joshua Prince-Ramus: Designing the Seattle Central Library

2009-01-05T12:12:00.001Z

Library as Place video

2009-01-05T12:09:00.001Z

found this after a bit of mooching

Hmmm so i went to spend my woolworths christmas vouchers today

2009-01-05T11:57:00.003Z

. . .end of an era

mooch of the day - an appreciation of the architecture of bbc look and read!

2008-12-21T16:05:00.001Z

oh to be a kid again, i swear that giant mouse used to give me nightmares

living+library - precedent - Biblioteca Comunale Di Nembro

2008-12-16T18:45:00.004Z

Biblioteca Comunale Di Nembro by Archea Associati

perhaps my favorite precedent so far my thesis project!

A building erected in 1897, intended as a primary school, that has been used for many purposes over the years, first becoming town hall, then kindergarten and finally consulting room. The request of the municipality was to solve the contingent state of abandon, turning the building into a library, to provide the town with a facility dedicated to education and information of the residents.

The strategic position in relation to the urban tissue, the architectural character of the original structure, closed on three sides, and the need for new spaces oriented the project towards the addition of a new wing in the form of a new construction that closes the only open side, that once faced a courtyard.

The new building, connected via the basement, is separated from the existing structure on all sides, thus underscoring a difference that, in spite of the communicating plan, bears witness to a constructive and formal choice that establishes a dialectic contrast with the historical character of the original building; completely transparent, it is characterized by its surface, made of terracotta elements measuring 40x40 centimeters, glazed in carmine red, supported by a structure made from coupled steel profiles.

This building technique has made it possible to screen and filter the sunlight.The choice of earthenware has been suggested precisely by the typical characteristics of the material, its performance as a screen protecting from light and its link to traditional building methods, but also by the contemporary image created thanks to the assembly technique and its durability.

A large room with computers available for consulting is located in the basement, which also provides access to the new building and its reading room that contains, in the manner of a casket, the precious books available for consulting; the triple height is exploited by two projecting mezzanines housing numerous reading desks, while the main study rooms are located on the ground and first floor of the old building.

random of the day - parkour

2008-12-16T18:33:00.003Z

so i was mooching on the net today and found this video that reminded me of what ryan was trying to create along briggate!

urban grain

2008-12-14T17:00:00.002Z

strange to think, in the life of a city, how often the urban grain is changed or reformed as is happening with the trinity development

living+library - precedent visit - newcastle - bits'n'bobs

2008-12-14T14:25:00.009Z

Newcastle Central Library, Under Construction

Visit - The Sage, Baltic & Millenium Bridge

Visit - Centre for Life - Terry Farrell

Visit - Laing Art Gallery, Elevation - Visions & Realities in Modern Architecture Exhibition.

A really interesting exhibition with some brilliant illustrations and models. The exhibition displays Painting, sculpture, photography and video by artists including Rachel Whiteread, Langlands and Bell and Paul Noble, responding to themes such as urban living, social housing and regeneration.

Some pretty interesting landscaping too!

living+library - precedent visit - seven stories, newcastle

2008-12-14T13:59:00.005Z

Seven Stories - The Centre For Childrens Books - Newcastle

Seven Stories is the only exhibition space in the UK dedicated to the celebration of British children's literature

When it was completed it became recognised as a new national home for children’s literature, it brings together original manuscripts and artwork from some of the nation’s best loved children’s books, to involve children, young people and their families, carers and educators in a unique exploration of creativity, literature and art.
The project involved the redevelopment of a redundant mill - a Grade II Listed building,including creating a new extension forming a main entrance, lift and stair tower, galleries exhibition spaces and restaurant.

The project received the Lord Mayor's Design Award for Regeneration and Accessibility, a Commendation in Landmark Awards, RICS Renaissance Award for Project of the Year 2006, together with a Civic Trust Award 2006.

The project also involved using imaginative community consultation to ensure the scheme is enjoyed by visitors and residents and has been given that extra sense of place through a modern intervention, maximising views and introducing public art.

living+library - precedent - heyri art valley, south korea

2008-12-09T17:41:00.004Z

Heyri Art Valley in South Korea is a cultural oasis – or at least that’s the plan. Quite close to the border with North Korea, it’s conceived as an eco-friendly arts colony, with housing, workspace and exhibition areas meant to epitomise good design.

living+library - precedent - paju book city

2008-12-09T16:47:00.012Z

Bookcity is located in the Paju area, viewed as the "land of promise". Located just 30 kilometers from Seoul, it is a publishing cultural community conveniently located near the Jayu highway. From the beginning, the Bookcity project was planned and established as an industrial city related specifically to books. It is intended as a place devoted to planning, producing and distributing books by well-intentioned publishers. Frequently asked questions while initiating the Bookcity project was why and for what purpose the city was being planned and built? Our answer is simple and clear: the city aims to recover the lost humanity. As such, Bookcity must be a space built for human being. Cities and its architecture are often called "mirrors of the era". This may refer to how cities and buildings reflect the lives of mankind, especially that of urban life in its edgiest form. It is a direct reflection of our distorted lives: a mixture of chaotic urban planning, unbalanced infrastructure, unsightly buildings, and confusing signs. It is apparent not only in Seoul but in any city. Such distorted urban scenes negatively impact our already arduous lives, creating a vicious circle where our environment exacerbates us endlessly. Why was such an urban setting created? Why and when did such unwholesome architecture and urban planning come to surround us? We offer this answer to that question: it is due to the loss of a sense of community! It was a result of individuals pursuing their own personal desires, neglecting or becoming disinterested in creating common ground. The loss of community and resulting distorted lives are inherently related to Korea's modern, contemporary history which is scattered with traces of shackles. Thirty-six years of Japanese colonial rule, followed by a chaotic liberation period, the Korean War fought between kin, and an indiscriminate influx of Western culture upon a Korean society made stagnant by authoritarian rule since the founding of the state until the 1980's in the economic order of the world's soaring industrialization: all these contributed to bringing intense psychological confusion and disorder to the people's sense of values. We have arrived at a stage today where life in urban to rural areas is extremely distorted.

Community in Practice

It is now time not merely to lament over the situation, but to find new alternative solutions. Would it be an overstatement to suggest that we have attempted to find realistic alternatives in the form of Bookcity? We hope not. As individuals devoted to publishing, we continuously seek to recover common values while planning such a project. In the midst of pursuing common values, we aim to provide a space that, simply, makes good books. In order to make this possible, we seek to recreate community compacts (HyangYak), pursued by Korea's forefathers, in forms appropriate for today. The Bookcity project places the utmost value in this "Community in Practice". This is based on the very simple principle of controlling personal, selfish desires in favor of considering common interests first. Since professional research, outlook and wisdom are necessary in determining what is the most valuable and useful for the whole; we have attempted to solve these problems by selecting people of outstanding qualities. This was, of course, the most appropriate approach.

Amalgamation of Publishing and Architecture

In planning and pursuing Bookcity, we continue to keep in mind the principles of book making that we use everyday. Book making is similar to architecture in that it takes pains to design and if the design is not satisfactory, one begins again from scratch. Even in terms of design, just as a quality architectural design fully considers and researches the environment and climate of the structural site, personality, occupation and number of people who are to occupy the space, as well as the necessary building materials, book making has similar considerations. When the painstaking design process is over, the difficult construction phase of book making, where the material is procured and the building is raised according to the blueprint, begins. However, book making at times requires just as much, if not more, expertise and time than building structures. Book making is indeed very similar to the process of erecting buildings. The spirit of book making is instilled in the foundation for planning and pursuing Bookcity, which is an amalgamation of publishing and architecture.

A Huge and Beautiful Book called Bookcity

We acquired a huge government project called "national industrialization development" in order to make a publishing community. Since it was important to attract the consideration of government policies, the project was recognized as a national industrialization development so that it could be realized after publishing receives recognition as a national strategic industry. However, we have attempted to overcome the uninspiring characteristics of an "industrialization development" by incorporating the dynamic characteristics of a "city". This is no different if we were editing a huge and beautiful book called "Bookcity" on a wide expanse of land. Urban design was undertaken by a team headed by Dr. Hwang Ki-Won of Seoul National University's Graduate School of Environmental Studies. As the city would be newly establishing an entire industrial system for planning, producing and distributing books to readers, we asked Professor Hwang's team to devise industrial plans after collecting and systematically dividing and analyzing general data about the publishing industry. This was a difficult task since information about the publishing industry was vastly inferior to the quantitative growth of publishing, making data collection and planning that much more difficult.

A Great Contract

As mentioned before, urban design was important in order to overcome the uninspiring and dull impression of an industrial development. In order to meet the demands of the next stage of construction, two outstanding architects of our time, Min Hyun-Shik and Seung H-Sang were selected as architectural coordinators. The two architects will work in conjunction with British architect Florian Beigel of the University of North London and two other architects, Kim Jong-Kyu and Kim Young-Joon, in preparing an Architectural Guideline for Bookcity.All architectural renderings must follow this Guideline and a group of architects who will follow it faithfully were organized. A list of 30 prominent architects from Korea and 10 architects from various countries was formed. An elaborate planning for constructing the city was planned and undertaken, including dividing the city into sectors and appointing sector architects. It also was not an easy task to persuade tenants not accustomed to such a process to follow the plans. Through this process "a great contract" was established between the tenants and the architects. It promises to suppress subjective architectural ideas and for architects to do their best to successfully build a city that harmonizes healthy publishing and architectural cultures. This contract has become a standard in all architectural activities within Bookcity and through this great contract the city's objectives are being realized one by one.

A Blossoming of a True Book Culture

Correcting the picture stained and distorted by history is not easy, but we expect this city to aid Korean society's expansion and reproduction by making a new milestone in Korea's desolate urban culture. Witness a new ideal in urban culture. It is our hope that such a specialized city will serve as a model in boosting Korea's general development of industrial structures. The bronze figure of the patriot Ahn Jung-Geun that stands in the heart of the city, the Asia Publication-Culture and Information Center, looks toward continued success of all our plans.

http://www.pajubookcity.org/english/Bookcity/sub01.php

define/redefine/PROPOSE

2008-12-04T15:53:00.004Z

bikespot - visuals

2008-12-04T15:41:00.006Z

if only i had more time then some of them could have been rendered at a higher res, will just have to peddle faster next time!

4x4 Returns!

2008-11-24T17:45:00.002Z

floooooooooooooooood!

2008-11-24T17:28:00.004Z

Finally I heard back from the Environment Agency today, they provided me with some pretty interesting stuff including the above image.

bikespot - initial image

2008-11-21T17:32:00.004Z

bikespot - concept image

2008-11-21T17:30:00.003Z

living library - precedent - kids republic bookstore

2008-11-19T20:01:00.002Z

bikespot - precedent - velo-city

2008-11-19T19:17:00.005Z

Velo-City is an elevated bikeway, enclosed in tubes to provide protection for all season cycling. The tubes create a natural tail wind which reduces air resistance and increases speed. Cyclists can zip through a network of tubes like lab rats and resurface at various exit points in the street.

bikespot - precedent - bikedispenser

2008-11-19T18:51:00.004Z

Cyclists pay a small fee to hire a bike, and then they can take it where they please. Once they’ve finished, they can return it either to that machine, or another one across town. And because they’ve been fitted with RFID tags, they won’t all have been nicked before you can get one.

liverpool, capital of culture?

2008-11-12T16:54:00.003Z

it's been two years since i last made a trip to liverpool but visiting the Le Corb exhibition over the weekend i notice the change is outstanding, the city seems to have been transformed through a series of key high quality new landscaped routes which run through recently opened retail developments, high quality top notch stuff! very impressed.

American Library Bill of Rights Excerpt

2008-11-11T13:27:00.000Z

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/statementspols/statementsif/librarybillrights.cfm

thought for the day. . libraries are not just an institution but a pheonomenon in society

2008-11-11T13:09:00.004Z

The Leeds Library is the oldest subscription library in the UK, could this form a collaboration with the Living+Library?

There as 53 Libraries in Leeds but none are specialist children's ones.

Leeds Central Library currently houses a number of collections which could also be tied into a collaboration with Living+Library archives

The Gott Bequest of Early English Gardening Books
The Forton Collection of Judaica
The Gascoigne Militaria Collection

The four main areas that living library needs to encompass are:

Collection - Childrens Literature with Archive Storage for special collections or first editions
Current and future use
Modes of access to information
The future of libraries in a digitalised world

define/REDEFINE/propose

2008-11-10T13:07:00.002Z

a collaboratie with karl/rick

DEFINE/redefine/propose

2008-11-10T13:03:00.002Z

a collaborative with karl/rick

twinned cities

2008-11-10T13:00:00.001Z

just for interest. . .a quick look at the similarities and differences between the many cities that leeds is twinned with. a collaborative with ollie/karl/seyed/sunil/sunny/yassar/abby

disecting briggate

2008-11-10T12:50:00.003Z

collaborating with - ollie/karl/seyed/sunil/sunny/yassar/abby

senseable city lab

2008-10-30T16:51:00.000Z

The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://senseable.mit.edu/

thought for the day. .

2008-10-30T16:15:00.005Z

a place that encompasses the whole life cycle of a book from its conception to its death, the living library will contain a publishing house, specialist archive storage for first edition and of course a library for childrens literature.

in the coming weeks I hope to visit 'seven stories' in newcastle which is the national centre for childrens books, this should hopefully give me an insight into how it is possible for architecture to stimulate children.

Taking its name from the idea that there are seven basic stories but thousands of ways of telling them, Seven Stories celebrates the work of children’s writers and illustrators.

The UK’s only dedicated exhibition space to children’s literature is located in a previously redundant Grade II listed mill, nestling between railway viaducts and until now a neglected river in Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle. The attraction incorporates art commissions, one of which was developed in conjunction with children from nine local schools – The Voyage, a floating boat sculpture moored on the Ouseburn outside the Seven Stories building.

image and italic text pasted from http://www.rics.org/Newsroom/Keyissues/RICSAwards/International/awards_sevenstoriesthecentreforchildrensbooks02062006.htm

on another note. .

2008-10-25T16:13:00.002+01:00

precedent - bishan community library

2008-10-25T14:10:00.004+01:00

For easy navigation and user orientation, the library is separated into distinct zones e.g. collection / program, services and circulation. The constant dialectic interplay of active/passive, quiet/noisy, bright/shaded between the different zones brings vibrancy to the library.

The parti formed an effective structural strategy, concentrating the structural supports onto the sides of the building allows for a huge expanse of column free space in the centre to cater for the main activities of the library. The various building services required by the library are concentrated in the core along CPF Building while the opposite end houses a tall atrium space which acts as the entrance space to the library.

Library plays an important role within the community. Thats why they had need to rethink the role of the library as the traditional repository of knowledge, the more pertinent issue at hand were how to engage the people. This is especially relevant for community libraries where the library shares an intricate relationship with the community, transcending the traditional boundaries of education, information and recreation.

http://cubeme.com/blog/2008/01/30/bishan-community-library-by-look-architects/

precedent - childrens paper chair

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http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/kids/CHILDRENS-PAPER-CHAIR/

precedent - unknown

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Traditionally, libraries also suffer from an image problem. Hordes of books coupled with the 'sshhhh' factor doesn't make for a very cool environment. By installing colorful interiors such as oversized book sleeves, a learning space such as the library is transformed into an area which kids see as cool, and therefore are inspired to read and learn.

precedent - pontificial lateral university library, italy

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The building is an extension of the existing library at the Pontificial Lateran University, which houses new reading rooms and an Auditorium. Designed by Rome firm King Roselli the building features not usually seen in these types of spaces, such as a curved ceiling, angular stair-casing and vast glass panelling.

The university holds an outstanding collection of books numbering around 600,000 volumes, some of which date back to the 16th century, whose subjects for the most part coincide with the principal academic courses: philosophy, theology and law. The bulk of them are now deposited in the newly restored compartmentalised underground vaults equipped with an adequate fire extinguisher system and humidity and temperature control.

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/architecture/Pontificial-Lateral-University-Library---Italy/

living+library site location

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living+library introduction

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living+library - the arthur ransome library for childrens literature.

arthur ransome was born in leeds in 1884. in 1929 he wrote Swallows and Amazons the first of a series of books based on childrens adventures by water, giving him the reputation as one of the best english writers of children's books.

the living+library will explore the roll that architecture plays in stimulating learning in young children through the medium of literature.