The Book Stop Project

The Book Stop Project is a prototype that determines the role that libraries play in contemporary urban societies and the shape that they may take as society develops and grows. How have we changed in our interactions with libraries and what sort of network depth and breadth would be ideal for our cities? The project seeks to reinvent the place and space that a library embodies and not the platform itself which distributes books and encourages reading. Imagined as a row of 7 books being taken from a shelf, this collection serves as a portal that allows visitors to enter into a world of books where ideas and possibilities are endless. The warping and surreal dancing geometry skews and distorts as viewed from varying angles. It is at once a square, a rectangle, and a trapezoid and allows the viewer a shifting perspective with its multiple transparencies and voids. The Book Stop Project is clad in perforated steel that allows privacy yet provides security by making internal activities transparent and public. The form together with the material allows a sense of solidity and openness. It's openness encourages entry and interaction and brings together in close vicinity like-mined individuals and encourages them to interact with each other, while the solidity and durability of the steel components creates a sense of place and permanence. The Book Stop is a bite-sized library for a culture that is accustomed to consuming literature in easily digestible pieces. It is a gateway facility that allows frictionless access and facilitates a system of free and nonbinding sharing that reinforces the idea of books and knowledge as open and transparent. You walk in and you walk out. You give a book and get a book. It is a place and an idea. It is a mobile library for the mobile generation.