Japan Library by Andrew Maynard Architects

THE COMMUNAL COMPUTER CHIP

Libraries, like many of our institutional buildings, are societies tools of self reference. Society and community connect and understand itself, its past and is present direction into the future through its access to cultural information and shared knowledge. With a shifting functional nature to our libraries we must maintain an architectural language that reinforces the importance of collected, shared knowledge to community structure.

The design provides a solution for the increased digitalisation of information. Through overlapping the digital and the mechanical with the tactility of decades of written material this design provides us with a new possibility of making digitalisation more tactile and real to the community and to the city. This design is combative against the introspection of digital media without being dismissive of its importance. Through the overlay of the digital and the real the design provides a bridge between the virtual and the actual.