The idea of building a new library in these days of the internet seems almost quaint. Something of a throwback to times when information wasn’t as accessible, yet overwhelming. Certainly the very idea of what is a library and what it can offer society has changed. When speaking of this change of idea, most young architect’s would try to challenge our preconceptions of what a Library is or offer us some theory of information diffusion cast in a formal strategy that expresses to the world, through Architecture the grand and revolutionary changes in the world of information today. Yet does every new building, let alone every library need to be a statement on society, or an expression of the world of information as a whole? Certainly such definitions of the problem are valid and important to the discussion of Architecture, but this is to the detriment of other problems.

The book still hasn’t found its way into the ethereal realm of the digital media. There is vast stores of knowledge locked away in warehouses all around the world; the off site facilities of the major library’s that make up many large Universities collections. In fact there is a trend to off site management of collections, allowing only those most “useful” books to stay in the labyrinth of stacks at such libraries as Avery Library at Columbia University.

The Manhattan Archive and Library is just down the hill from Columbia University at the cross roads of 115th St. and Fredrick Douglass Boulevard (8th Ave.) in New York City. With the strong community of Harlem around it, the Archive serves as a nexus of information in the neighborhood. Part community center, part book digital archiving service, the Archive’s mission statement is about information conductivity. The Archive offers services to communities and universities alike; digitally scanning books and making them accessible via their client’s networks and sharing in each institutions book lending programs.

The Archive remains largely formally silent in its intentions, neither slickly minimal nor conceptually expressive; instead it remains a simple construction. Instead it is rather ordinary, not in the sense of normalcy or banality, but rather as in the ordinary and the singular. Where the singular serves as a defining focus of organization for a given field or system, the ordinary is the connective tissue of the field itself; diffuse yet defined. In this sense, the Archive is part of the neighborhood and the urban fabric, it maintains the street wall and building height of its neighbors, yet separate and defined as something different by its entrance courtyard and separation from the surrounding buildings, giving the building a almost cubic reading.

At the intersection of Hudson and Canal, the Holland Tunnel comes up on the Manhattan side. Just blocks away, the West Side Highway barrels down the side of the island, distributing cars all across Manhattan. On Canal between these two transportation networks at the top of Tribeca, is a small triangular block. On this site, a small building containing telecommunications switching equipment sits. It isn’t a billboard of some large corporations brand designed to be an image of that corporation’s power and influence, though it might become that. It isn’t a grand experiment designed to challenge the way we live. In fact it is mainly designed for the lives of the equipment that dwell there, humans only regurlarly occupy the top floor of offices and the roof garden. The building is more object than subject, more a construction than a creation, a construing of material rather than thought.

Both construe and construct come from the same Latin origin,¹ the word construo which in Latin means to pile up together or to arrange in a group.² From this definition one can see that a construct is an arrangement of pieces set in relation to each other in a joining to resist a force or forces. In the end, it is the joint between the pieces not the pieces themselves that constitute the construct, for it is in the act of joining that the assemblage gains its ability to resist the deteriorating forces of the world. Yet the pieces themselves have only certain kinds of capacities to join with each other. These capacities are immanent in the pieces themselves.

The process of construing – constructing is one of determining the capacities of pieces to join with each other and the actualization of the joint. Marco Frascari describes this double relationship as the “techne of logos” and the “logos of techne” or the craft of logic and the logic of craft.³ The craft of logic is the act of producing thought while the logic of craft is the act of actualizing that thought into a physical embodied construct, the joint. Both are acts of construction.

1. Jess Stein, ed., The Random House College Dictionary Revised Edition, (New York: Random House, Inc., 1988), pg. 288.
2. John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), pg. 115.
3. Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale Detail”, Via 7, MIT Press, pg. 23

Classical Space
Space and time are thought of as negative, empty medium in which events happen. Space is used to measure phenomenon but holds no affective power of its own. Space is the field of extension. Time is used similiarly to keep pace or measure the rhythm of events but is empty in its power to affect. Space frames the events and objects that occur within it. Framing space is the closest conception of space to our conscious perceptions of space.

Space and Time in Relativity
Einstien showed that all objects are in constant dynamic motion but split this motion between the four dimensions of spacetime. Certain objects like light (photons) only travel through space while matter travels in all four dimensions. Motion through spacetime warps and distorts extensive space and time. Extensive lengths and durations are relative to ones motion or energy. Ones energy can be thought of as ones affection on the shape of spacetime. Space and time are now united into a field that influences and is influenced by the motion of objects and events within it. The field of spacetime is conceived of as a set of relationships between objects in motion. That is space and time are now intensive. The spacetime field at this scale is how our pre-conscious bodies interact with space. This is what Merleau-Ponty called motor-intentionality.

Space-Time at the Quantum Level
As the scale of spacetime gets smaller, space time starts to fluctuate and with each shift of scale the fluctuations become more and more violent till the Planck Length at which point any conception of spacetime as a continuous field breaks apart into what has been called the quantum foam. Objects no longer have a definite motion or location but exist across areas of potentialities in a fashion known as wave-particle duality. Wave-particle duality is the behavior of matter-energy to show characteristics of both a wave field (interference patterns) and a quantized, discrete object. At the quantum scale spacetime is indistinct and constantly fluctuating yet the frame and the field become united in a new hybrid.

Space-Time in String Theory
All four major forces and the composition of matter is now thought of as being due to the resonant vibrations of tiny strings the average size of the Planck length. The strings vibrate in 10 space dimensions and 1 time dimension. These vibrations cause electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and gravity. So like gravity, motion produces and affects matter energy. Other space dimensions are curled up and very tiny.
String theory says that spacetime is a complex multi-dimensional place where events happen in multiple asynchronous ways.

Space in the Work of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock’s work seems to hover between a classical framed space and the field & layered spaces of modern physics. The liquid consistancy of the paint carried the force of Pollock’s action, transfering that force onto the canvas. This act of preservation transforms the intensive, spacetime motion, into a extensive spatial object effectively collapsing the spacetime field. Pollock very carefully composed his paintings within the frame of the canvas, yet the frame had to grow to contain the high energy motions involved. A line, drip or spatter’s identity is only understood in its relative motion to the other lines, drips, or splatters and the space of the canvas between. The observer, in turn, re-expands the flat frame of the canvas into the spatial movements involved, thus the painting tends to hover between the flatness of it materiality and the spatial depth of the movements involved in its creation.

Construction
The process of construction becomes the process of defining space, with the joint as its primary expression. But the joint is never complete, the two or more objects are always held apart, always in the process of coming together, always becoming. Like the Pollock’s critique of the canvas, the building becomes broken apart, with the ever changing field of human behavior spilling out between the cracks. Yet, like the canvas, the framing mechanism of the building persists, not entirely lost. For the building isn’t the figure in this story, but remains just a influencing intensive space from which the figure emerges as the human body and its field of interaction.

On an urban scale a similar spatial realignment is called for. Spatial mismatch is a term used by urban planners to describe a situation where a population is physically or culturally separated from resources that can help them advance economically or socially. Brownsville is one such community, where spatial mismatches are extreme. The services that exist in Brownsville are geared toward the ‘helping’ of the population in their day to day existence. Very little is provided to help them improve their lives, in fact such improvement would preclude them from the social and economic networks which they need to sustain themselves. Their advancement leaves them at a disadvantage. Because of this circumstance, poverty has become institutionalized in Brownsville.

Laminates are a class of materials that produce composite performances by layering lamina or sheets together. The composite performance is only produced through the difference between the lamina. This model of productive difference through lamination is not one of forming boundaries or thresholds between the sheets but rather of connecting the sheets forming conductivity between the lamina. Conductivity is the quality of the connection between the lamina and is what forms the composite performance.

Laminates are a way of spatially organizing materials, both physical materials and cultural materials, and can provide a model for redistributing the services of Brownsville and the production of housing in the service and under the direction of the residents so as to not just help, not just prevent but to form composite performance of progression and changes.

RESEARCH.services
Common Ground
A New York based non-profit housing and community development organization whose mission is to solve homelessness

Community Service Society
New York City based community support services, programs and research.

Urban Institute
A nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization

RESEARCH.material
Hexcel
Honeycomb sandwich panel manufacturer

Kennedy & Violich Architecture

Material System Organization
Master’s Thesis Project for the Architecture Association’s Emergent Technology Program

Panelite
Light translucent honeycomb panel manufacturer.

Priva-lite
Electrified liquid crystal laminated glass

Transmaterial
Material index of innovative materials

Transalpin
Wood.e: electrified bent plywood furniture

The study took the nexus that is to become the Fulton Transit Center and through a series of experiments, looked at how one could propose an ever changing yet qualitatively charged series of programs on the site. It looked at Architecture more as a set of qualitative performances that shape our lives.

The basic strategy for the project was to pick a tactic for approaching the site, then through an abstract study mechanics of that tactic, place the performative model on the site that would generate a potential program, form, and structure. This would then be interpreted into a basic building proposal.



Tactic

• Disruptive Infiltration
  Through the disruption of the system, a foreign agent can infiltrate and gain influence over the system.

Qualitative Performance

• Disruptive Flux
  The affect of the system to quickly move from a semi-stable, sedentary state to a state of transience characterized by a high degree of energy.

Yield

• Conductivity
  The ability of a energetic flow to overcome resistance in a material substrate.

Modes of Operation

• Sedation
  The tendency of the system to lower its energy state. The system becomes more stable, and shows less degrees of freedom.
• Disruption
  A transient state between sedation and excitation showing bifurcations of energy states.
• Excitation
  The tendency of the system or parts of the system to achieve a highly energetic state. The system shows a high degree of freedom.

Materials of Conduction

• Sedentary
  Material that has few degrees of freedom (ordered material). Characterized by a strong disruption and a sedate, yet clear excitation.
• Transient
  Material with many degrees of freedom (fluid). Characterized by strong disruption, clear excitation, and strong sedation.
• Expectant
  Material with no degrees of freedom (blockage). Characterized by a strong sedate distruption, disruptive excitation, and strong sedation.