Kim
Coleman
Associate Professor, University of Southern California School of Architecture
Associate Professor, University of Southern California School of Architecture
Library for the Twenty-first Century
The library and its cultural role as an archive of the past and a key to the future, was the theme of my Fifth Year Comprehensive studio in 2002. Students investigated how the architecture of a public building may be used as a catalyst for place-making in an urban setting. A library, of approximately 50,000 square feet, that anticipates future needs and defines new solutions to the building typology was designed for urban sites identified by the students. The students worked in teams in the preliminary studies and were encouraged to worrk collaboratively throughout the semester. An additional framework for the was “A Library for the Future,” the 2002 Dupont Benedictus Student Design Competition, sponsored by the ACSA and the AIA
A children’s game, rock/paper/scissors, was applied as a potential metaphor for the simultaneous contrast and balance between elements, materials, and spaces in the design work. As rock smashes scissors, so scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock. Each element is both dominant and recessive, depending on what it is contrasted with. The contrast between elements creates a new type of framework. Students tested how this idea might apply to architecture with respect to spatial organization, quality of light and shadow, materiality, and matters both tangible and organizational.
