The
supremacy of the book has been challenged by the digital revolution. Now
knowledge is virtually everywhere: it has broken free of the constraint of
buildings. Electronic knowledge is nowadays available to everybody - in the
home, workplace, airport terminal, school, etc. However, the need for a
physical interface will always remain, a three-dimensional identity of virtual
knowledge that redefines digital information exchange as a constructed
experience in space.
As media
continuously overwhelms us with images, our perception of information has been
drastically modified, the libraries evolution through the integration of new
media technologies is responding to society’s insatiable appetite for visual
stimulation. New libraries have to react to the inherent culture of postmodern
media society.
The
mediatheque celebrates the digital information age, media, creativity and
alternative methods of learning
and in
many cases the program becomes tailored towards and encourages imagination. The
Internet has simultaneously shifted our perception of knowledge as well as our
relationship to the physical territory and the new media library can actually
reinforce its significance by becoming a physical manifestation of the
information age.
The
building is conceived as a network that establishes a series of complex interconnected
relationships between programmatic, departmental and ancillary functions of the
building, intricacies of the libraries collection, predicted events within the
building and their fusion with the cultural and physical characteristics of the
site.
Cross
programming strategies integrate a number of multidisciplinary functions that
are tailored towards the evolving library typology. The comprehensive program
is strategically orientated around the dichotomised of social condition and
through this the building hopes to become a critique of its social context.
The form
responds directly to the unique urban context and is a fusion of intuition,
site and media. The parasitic shards explore the topography and metamorphoses
into differing states, adapting to its surroundings and connecting to the
subliminal archaeology of the site. A symbiosis of imperfection, beauty and
destruction.
Users
are free to explore the dynamic and intuitive fluid landscape of knowledge that
blurs boundaries between traditional spatial divisions by hybridizing the
functional requirements of the library into a series of comprehensive event
spaces. The Library is deliberately ambiguous so that people can find in it
something that they can recognise from their own particular perspective
An
environment where information is merged with entertainment and where the
transposition of image, sound, and text assimilate data into a comprehensive
experience. The user becomes immersed in a virtual world of predigested data,
which is presented as a ready-made product of seduction.