Last Thursday I meandered up to San Francisco for a great talk about architect/futurist Cedric Price given by Molly Wright Steenson at Adaptive Path. I've always had a thing for futurists like Price: people who dream up big, crazy, unrealized ideas that make very little sense at the time and then 50-100 years later we sit around and sip wine, show slides and discuss their genius. People like Price encourage you to think big, to scrap annoyances like being practical and realistic so you can dig into the possibilities of the future with as few restrictions as possible.
Steenson spoke about the research she is doing on Price's 1966 Oxford Corner House Feasibility Study. Price had this grand vision to transform a failing tea house/restaurant that had gone out of vogue into an information hub for the poeple of London. The design was fun and crazy; the plans were reflective of network diagrams and the structure incorporated hydraulic floors. The whole thing took a very literal approach to the idea of creating architectural space that reflects the way an information space works. Price thought of the creation of architecture as a last resort, that building was an activity driven by necessity, so the literal approach to building an information space seems quite logical. I find this interesting because it is the opposite of the way these issues come up nowadays. Now we have robust, networked information spaces thanks to the web, and we regularly apply or impose the vocabulary of physical space to those. Now we have entire virtual worlds. Price wanted to try it the other way around.
Next week promises more interesting activities. Again I'll trek up to San Francisco for a Creative Commons "interactive salon on the growth of user participation and sharing in museums and cultural institutions." I'm attending because I'm interested in finding ways that libraries can engage library patrons in new and interesting ways, and exhibition design is a great place to look for ideas. As a web re-designer at San Jose Public Library I've got a pretty standard toolbox of means by which we can create community conversations around media online, but I expect this event to provide some insight into ways we can bridge the digital and the physical spaces. I'm hoping that after seeing Price's literal translation of information into architecture this event will trigger some kind of apple-falling-on-my-head moment for library land.
As if it was all planned for my own benefit, the day after this CC salon I'll be at San Francisco Public Library for the Future of Libraries 6.0 where at least of two of my favorite colleagues will be talking, Sarah Houghton-Jan on '2.0 Services without 2.0 Million Dollars: The best free web services for broke libraries' and Patrick Sweeney on 'Managing Online Presence to Increase Social Capital.' This should be great, and I'll certainly do a writeup about all that goes on.
Finally, and I know I'm rambling at this point but there does seem to be an uncanny convergence of related things happening lately, I got an email about an ALCTS forum January 7th in San Diego called "Beams & Bytes: Constructing the Future Library -- Architectural and Digital Considerations". Check out this description. This soudns worth attending.
"Changing user expectations and the relentless shift to the digital medium are rapidly influencing library structures and services. No longer just a reference and circulation desk or a static repository for books and journals, the 21st Century library is evolving to accommodate new services, collecting patterns, and user demands. Both presentations and participative activities will focus on the physical and digital infrastructure of libraries, conceiving and creating services to meet user needs and expectations, transforming collections and access, and how all of this will affect the people who work in libraries."
