barcode

Boston, MA

spring 2018

As a public library located in an urban infill site at a key point of axial convergence in Harvard University campus, the Barcode negotiates public space and circulation through formalizing itself after the bookstack. By creating 3 meter gaps in between each tower-stack the project carefully curates the bypasser through the site while affording them a sublime architectonic impression dictated by the book density visible through the glazed facades of the towers. The library visitor is introduced through a compressive subterranean study space only to be faced with the sharp vertical expansion of the book towers. 

By adapting a nexus of bridges in between the tower-stacks, the design formalizes around how modes of knowledge-production and ontological processes of learning are non-linearized in the digital age. These catwalks not only curate the vertical circulation across the library, they act as phenomenological bridges between different disciplines of knowledge, catalyzing unanticipated encounters of information.

Awarded Seipp Memorial Prize

Advisor: Vince Mulcahy