Also, ALA staff have written about this research in the PLA journal, Public Libraries, and American Libraries.

In an era when many conventionally designed buildings develop major problems within 5-10 years of completion, any structure which deviates from conventional design must at least meet some basic requirements; namely that it not leak and the design not enable climate-related problems such as improper drainage, blockage of exits, and the creation of safety hazards.

To do otherwise is not only a breach of the public trust, but also a waste of public monies, even if a building is largely build with donor funds (since most new construction doesn’t come with an endowment for maintenance and upkeep). Let’s hope the Lewis Library doesn’t develop similar problems as has its northern cousin.

Libraries are a place to exchange knowledge and we are also information navigators and a place to cultivate creative sparks. I hope that we learn to embody those things and visually show them through our logos, our print collateral, in our web sites and in our social media environments.

You made a point about your fascination that this chemical company was able to create a creative and consistent brand for over thirty years. I think libraries will be able to do this soon once we take brand deeper than our brochures and web sites. It has to be in our language, in our organization culture, in our environments.

I also think that this creativity and consistency you found in this chemistry company brand will natually come to libraries when we do choose our focus and direction.

Four of my favorite library logos beside my own (Houston Public Library) are Enoch Pratt Free Library, Rangeview Library District, New York Public Library, Grand Rapids Public Library.

Thanks for the post.

One of the things that excites me about the best contemporary public libraries is the fact that they are more than “historical… expressions of order in a society that desires to store and catalog information”, now they seek to engage participants (patrons) in different ways. A great public library is a community organizing space that connects the ideas, thoughts and knowledge of its participants with those of other users, as well as with the traditional media resources. I wonder if this new connective mission for public library spaces doesn’t make sense ‘deconstructed’ and if it isn’t a natural conclusion for architects to create spaces that embrace these different stages of knowledge production and transmission.

Well, the only way to truly judge a building is to experience it and see whether it provides a pleasant working environment. A library should not only help someone find and read books, it should also regenerate a user through the visceral impact of its spaces and surfaces (not a cocaine-like momentary high, but a longer term satisfaction). I’m not sure the deconstructivist libraries mentioned in this article do that.

As for validating a library because it somehow reflects current literary thought, that is a slippery slope. What if there is a transient intellectual infatuation with nichilism, or with satanic cults? Surely we don’t wish to tie architectural form to extra-architectural notions, which may be here today but gone out of fashion tomorrow, while the building is left to torment generations to come.

Also ponder on the historical fact that libraries are expressions of order in a society that desires to store and catalog information. This requires a tradition of political and philosophical stability, and is the opposite of the randomness expressed in contemporary architectural discourse. There do exist random and disordered societies, unfortunately, and there you can find no libraries at all. The mathematics of organization and coherence that creates a library in the first place must be supported by both its society and its architecture. Any deviation from this fundamental idea, say for the sake of architectural novelty, is bound to be short-lived.

Best wishes to all,
Nikos