2021

The Pedagogical Transit: Emancipating the Critical Spaces of the Library

Felix Wang

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Lib Roof
A Reimagining of the Auckland Central Library Rooftop

This thesis begins in the noticing of a shift in the world, of new modes of existence, of place and interactions, and of information and communication. This shift was first experienced through the growth of the printing press, then through the rapid development of electronics and once again in the digital age. Every time a communication boom occurs, it opens up a swell of opportunities but simultaneously leaves the world in disarray as different hierarchies dissolve, transform and consolidate. 


The conception and evolution of the public library represented a democratisation of knowledge, a mediator between the increasingly literate public and new modes of knowing. Its relationship with information facilitated a production of space that strays outside the realm of capital, a scarcity in an increasingly neoliberal urban landscape. But as the nature of information continues to fluctuate at an exponential rate, it presents a new democratic condition that is often outside of its institutional reach. Using the Auckland Central Library as a basis, this thesis speculates upon new ways of facilitating urban discourse, a dissemination of its third spaces through the cross-pollination with the transport network. 



The Mobile Library Modules, reactive against the pervasive nature of surveillance capitalism, are an exploration that seeks to instrumentalise the ubiquity of digital connections, temporal third spaces, and a resocialising of the commute.

 
Map
Dockstation
Docking stations continuously formulating different combination of the library modules.
Ext
Metabolist exterior frames that circulates different modules throughout the week

The existing library rooftop intervention seeks to topple the hierarchical functions of the structure but to keep the foundational democratic values of the library. It provides a review on the importance of physical print and its history.

 
Untitled 2
Section

The reappropriation of the Skyworld building seeks to speculate a way for physical spaces to adapt to the ever-accelerating world. It presents itself as a system in constant modulation, fluctuating and altered by the media within. As media becomes more and more of a social agent, presenting new methods of learning, engagement, and discourse, it seeks to continuously cross-pollinate new forms of expression as a way of pushing culture forward as well as staying critical of emerging mediums.

 
Circulate

The modules circulate all three components, keeping a continuous dialogue of the different ways the public engages with these spaces. This thesis is neither an advocation of the digital, nor a nostalgic remembrance of the physical, but a speculative proposal of how it is possible to mediate the two sides of the same coin.