Group 6
- Elise Maxwell
- Devan Bobo
- Simone Bateman
- Kara Emeney
- Sarah Ward
For our public spaces walkabout, we visited the Salt Lake City Public Library’s downtown location.
The library is clearly a public space. From the street, you can see into the building and it has a clear entrance with numerous people entering and exiting. Every place where the building is labeled clearly says “public” library. There are no fences or other boundaries prohibiting entrance to the library.
As a public place, the library is very accessible to many different kinds of people. The library, located in the free-fare zone, has its own Trax stop, as well as being a bus stop for various routes. This allows not only business people, but also those without other forms of transportation.
The library is not simply a place to just check out books and leave. The downtown library offers a large children’s floor with story time once a week as well as themed reading rooms. While we were there, there were many families visiting the library. In addition to families, there were groups of businessmen working at tables. There were also groups of teens just chillin’. In general, because of the high traffic flow, people didn’t recognize or greet each other, making it a very faceless place.
The library had a high level of diversity beyond just social class. Many brochures were available in both English and Spanish. The library also has various community outreach programs in order to increase literacy regardless of language barriers.
The library is highly distinctive because of its unique, curved architecture that stands in contrast to the grid of Salt Lake. The curve of the building was mirrored in the internal architecture.
The staircases are also curved, and throughout the library there are plastic, curved sculptures. The designers, however, attempted to tie in the grid of the adjacent City and County Building. This can be seen in the straight lines of the lampposts that align with the paths of the City and County Building as well as the grid in the sculpture garden. The view from the top of the Library also connects the visitor with the rest of the city. From the top of the Library, we saw the Cathedral of the Madeline, the Capitol Building, the Greek Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral, multiple banking buildings, and Rice Eccles Stadium.
I love your last image which shows the way the library formally relates to the grid of the city and the more orthogonal or rectangular buildings nearby. Really great juxtaposition of shapes and forms.
ReplyDeleteYou did a nice job of talking about the social aspects of the library--the great diversity of persons and activities that take place there. I remember who strange I thought it was at first to eat food in the library at the little coffee shop on the main level, it seemed a little blasphemous to me, but it is a much more holistic approach to the use of the spaces. I also love how the building reveals itself to you--you can see the mechanical functions between the floors when you go up and down the elevators or the transparency of virtually every wall or enclosure. The building does such an interesting job of engaging the site, or the larger block beyond. It comes to life at night and changes as the sun moves across the sky throughout the daytime.
Great job! I hope you enjoyed yourselves!