PROGRAMME AND EVOLUTION: THE INFINITE LIBRARY

Today buildings have entered a competitive field in which they must constantly prove their usefulness to survive. One out of four buildings are demolished, not due to a material failure, but rather their inability to adapt to a change in the user’s needs. In this context, the public library finds itself at a critical moment in its history. Not only has the digitization of information dematerialized the library stacks, but it has also brought into question the library’s role as a public space. How can we design architecture which anticipates its own demise but does not yet know its own future?

This thesis explores the public library as a platform for hyper-adaptive architecture which is in a state of perpetual flux. Here, the building’s survival relies upon the wholehearted acceptance of its own programmatic evolution in order to produce an infinite library.