UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
ADAPTIVE LIBRARY
McKeldin serves as University of Maryland's flagship campus library, housing the majority of the university's print media. As technology and pedagogy continues to transform education of the 21st century, the library is undergoing a critical transition as well. Originally conceived as a warehouse for books, the library is now seeking to provide better spaces for the people who occupy them, including flexibility for collaboration, study, and discussion among students. Communicating with a real client, the proposed intervention carefully removes confined spaces along the perimeter, in lieu for comfortable study areas with access to light, air, and views. The print media is protected at the libraries core and showcases the stacks of knowledge as the fourth wall within the new grand reading room.
BOOKS AS HEART: UMD intends to transfer the majority of the stacks to off-site storage facilities in the coming years. Books may be still accessed by request for student and faculty-use, but will be shipped to McKeldin as needed. UMD's most popular resources will continue to be stored permanently on-site. Despite the diminishing necessity for physical books within Libraries, they remain a nostalgic symbol and representation of the quest for knowledge. In reaction to this cultural and physical shift, the concept seeks to showcase the undisturbed books at the building's core; to remain the beating-heart of the library. Suspended within the center of the library, users are constantly in visual contact with the stacks whether studying in the grand reading room or moving through, around, or under the heart itself.
PUBLICATION OF RESEARCH: This exploration is featured as one of many ideological concepts within the research and discourse spurred from the academic studio. The project and post-critic discussion may be found within The Living Library: An Intellectual Ecosystem and may be purchased at the ALA Store: http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=11347
