Eastern Parkway Branch of Brooklyn Public Library | Photo by Jonathan Tarleton

Earlier this month, the Center for an Urban Future released a report entitled Re-envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries, which takes stock of the capital needs of the city’s 207 branch libraries and identifies key obstacles to enabling them to meet 21st century demands. One component of this ongoing research and advocacy effort is adesign study, co-organized by The Architectural League, that has selected five teams to respond to design challenges distilled from the report’s recommendations. These challenges range from ideas for new kinds of branches to reconfiguring the interiors of existing ones. The ways we use libraries evolves much more quickly than the spaces can adapt. And any design intervention for existing libraries would benefit greatly from understanding how these community institutions were conceived when they were first created. A large proportion of New York’s branch libraries came about thanks to a philanthropic gift from the industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1901. In the article below,Yael Friedman explores the social, philosophical, and architectural context of Carnegie’s unprecedented investment in public knowledge. In rendering this history, she shows how that vision corresponds with a contemporary reality in which more New Yorkers are using neighborhood libraries in more ways than ever before.....Continue Reading

> via urbanomnibus.net