B7_#071 // The Library // Jonathan Wren

Using the premise that a library is a space with highly active walls and a passive floor and ceiling, this drawing experiments with the reversal of these roles.

Nodding toward both Koolhaas’s observations about the modern ceiling, and Borges infinite ‘Library of Babel’, this cube creates a space within which full height shelving descend from the ceiling plane.

The bottom of the bookshelves make up the total ceiling panels. Specific books are requested, and shelves in question emerge on cue, one by one. The ceiling becomes a deep service floor, leaving the library devoted to the pleasure and consumption of reading.

Jonathan Wren is an M.Arch Graduate from The Bartlett School of Architecture