Architectural speculations on the library of the future

ALIA National 2016 Conference, 29 August-2 September 2016 Adelaide: Engage Create Lead

This conference poster paper details work from a graduation design studio for M.Architecture students at the University of Adelaide in 2015, and its engagement with the university's central library, the Barr Smith Library, concurrently undertaking its own major review. The central task of the studio was to grapple with the question of "the library of the future". It sought ways of reinventing the library, an institution and a social and architectural typology that is seriously threatened by technological and social chang­es, chief among them being digitalisation and privatisation. In response to this situation, the studio asked its participants: what new hybrid configurations, scenarios, programs, and ty­pologies are plausible to sustaining the promise of the library.