At Temple University’s symposium in honor of the inauguration of the University’s new president, on Oct. 18, 2013.

Craig Dyker‘s company — Snøhetta — is a transdisciplinary group of architects of various sorts. (Snohetta is where Valhalla is.) They have offices in NYC and Oslo.

He points out that half of the people who come to the charging bull statute in NYC (next to his office) pose at the front and half come to the back. We are irrational creatures, he says. And tactile things are very much a part o who we are. (He has us shake hands with our neighbors.)

“There seems to be a liberal attitude couples with professional angst” among librarians. He’s been told that librarians have the most tattoos and skin piercings. There are many sites for librarians with tattoos. “Librarians won’t go away because we have this deep rooted fetish for libraians. It’s a fetish.” [TMI, Craig, TMI.] He’s not sure where it comes from except librarians are interesting people and you have intimate conversations with them.

If you ask people to describe a library, you get different answers. “As soon as you design for the state of the art, the art changes.” As architects, Snøhetta designs for versatility versus flexibility.

Their first library job: designing the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. He shows the building, which looks beautiful. It’s completely accessible. There’s a 4 acre plaza open to the public. “Libraries don’t stop at the door.” The police and the military wanted a wall around the plaza with guard towers. “We fought for six years” to build it without one.

During the uprisings, the students at the university and other citizens formed a human chain around the library to protect it — people on both sides of the argument. The plaza became a place for prayer and open debate.

Books and computers are just lumps until people interact with them. Libraries have always been about these interactions. This affected the design of the Hunt Library at NCSU. The existing library was foreboding, scary. The inside looked like a bank. The librarian decided to replace the furniture, but through a screw up, there wer 6 months when it had no furniture. So they bought 300 $10 bean bags…and library attendance tripled.

Then they decided to build a new library, on the engineering campus. Snohetta wanted to tie it to its place, which has rivers, weaving. They wanted natural light and fresh air, for the sake of the users but also the people who work there. There’s a balcony at the top where people congregate for fresh air and the view. Gardens are fed by rainwater from the roof. The building looks like it’s looking somewhere.

Books are fetched by a “robot,” whih people enjoy watching.

They want people to take the stairs, so they painted them yellow and put an inviting “Ask Me” sevice at the top. They put the elevators in a dark, less convenient place.

There are lots of types of chairs, but the swivel ones are very popular; bodily movement is really important, Craig stresses.

[He gives a guided tour which I can’t capture. You need the photos.]

“Libraries are as much about making as about taking,” so there are 3D printers, etc.

Einstein said that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Craig loves tech, but if tech manages his life, he becomes inhuman. Nothing we’ve invented in the past 30 years isn’t an elaboration of something before there were computers.

Library furniture and equipment looks like it’s for dental offices, so they put glass on top of regular tables, etc. “If you write on something you feel like you own the place.”

The NCSU library is designed for walking. But, you need a place to walk to. So, they had an arresting mural created.

Categories: libraries dw