The shape of knowledge
“Who does not read, at 70 years will have lived a single life: his own! The reader will have lived 5000 years: he was there when Cain slew Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired the Infinite. because reading is a backward immortality” (Umberto Eco)
Introduction
The 3A Composition Course will take place in two different working phases as for scale of intervention and intensity of work: a five-day Workshop in which a general study will be developed on the area of intervention (Polo Pindaro) and on the contents of the project theme (a media library); and a Workshop that will develop the project theme in detail, starting on September 2022 and ending on December 2022 (first semester).
Workshop
Timeline
The Workshop will take place over five working days (from 05-09-2022 to 09-09-2022). The teaching activity will end on the afternoon of day nine with the presentation of the projects and the evaluation of the work carried out by each group.
Scope
The Workshop is intended as an initial moment of study and reflection on the urban, regulatory and environmental characteristics of the Polo Pindaro intervention area, with the intention of laying the foundations for the realization of a Media Library on the University Campus, being both a study and a social gathering place for the city of Pescara. The territorial framework work will then be completed with the definition of an preliminary hypothesis of planivolumetric and functional development of the entire project area.
3A Composition Course
General considerations
The library is one of the rare examples of civil architecture in which physical space partially and apparently coincides with its real geometric dimensions.
Since ever and even more now that relations with the written text have been further liberalized and intensified, covering more or less evenly the library rooms, the books give these spaces the depth, complexity and evocative power of the billions of characters, millions of words and hundreds of thousands of sentences filling the pages and endlessly thickening the walls for a few priceless and immeasurable centimeters. And the organizational and functional evolution of the recent years, together with the progressive expansion and opening up to new communication codes and different information systems, contributed to exponentially develop the forms of knowledge and the imaginative ability proper to any encyclopedic collection.
In other words, the introduction of electronic data processing and, above all, the spread of the Internet, have not changed the knowledge keeping and transmitting ability, but have multiplied and expanded its relational dynamics, its communicative and, therefore, social possibilities. This social and collective purpose finds, moreover, its clearest expression in the changed percentages of use of the structure. If once 80% of the books were in the archives and only 20% were freely accessible, today it is the opposite. On its premises, the modern library therefore offers, alongside a provision of books, magazines and newspapers on display and for direct consultation, also a large number of variously configured and functional workstations (inspirational and thought-processing places). The library is not only a place for research but also a real public space. It is an articulated and integrated system of environments in which students, professors, people and media of all kinds meet, and where the search for information follows the lifetime of the scientific community.
Course program
The New Unified Library may be located anywhere within the area owned by the University between the “Strada Parco” and Via Falcone e Borsellino. The library design project has no dimensional constraints (except for the volume of 12.000 m3, to which must be added the storage areas, which may also be underground). It is therefore left up to the working groups choice whether to design a building that develops mainly horizontally or vertically, in line with the functional, organizational and iconic drawn up program. As well, students will be able to choose about the structural and material solutions for the facades, floors, false ceilings, etc.
The general quantitative and dimensional data of the New Unified Library are those envisaged in the project that in the next few months, according to the University's plans, will go out to tender and subsequently into construction (see attachment 1 from page 7 to page 18 of the general report).
