Meghan Quigley
Genealogy of Faulty Sequences
From the second-year graduate studio Other Winning Entries to the Chicago Public Library Competition, Spring 2019
Faculty: Stewart Hicks
About the studio:
Thomas Beeby describes his design for the Harold Washington Library in Chicago as part Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève, part department store, and part Monadnock Building. This studio used the same genealogy of mashups (high, low, local) to produce different results as “Other Winning Entries” to the Chicago Public Library competition that gave us Beeby’s project. The parameters for the original 1987 competition (program, site, etc.) were a starting point for exploring how different types might coexist in a single building. This quest for co-present types aimed to offer new ways to consider the library as a civic urban entity.
About the project:
This project transformed a given genealogy to offer a new approach to the block. As a precedent, the Boston Public Library and cinema offers a way to fragment the existing block into parts, forming a void that becomes equally important as the single mass. The breaking up allows for parts to be read as both individual objects as well as an object as a whole, with misalignments as well as evident seams on the exterior. The configuration of parts funnels the public in to begin to activate the void. Inside, within a sequence of spaces, a person discovers an abundance of zones situated right around their sought-for book.