TERRA · FOR[u]M
This project, entitled TERRA · FOR[u]M, is an exploration and response to the shifting paradigms facing current and future technological hubs- in this case, a post-industrial brownfield site just southeast of downtown Toronto. This specific intervention recognizes and stems from a few important observations:
1] Libraries at large are experiencing an expansion of programmatic demand, but a blurring between departmental distinctions.
2] Open access to modern resources is crucial for the socio-economic wellbeing and prosperity of a community and an individual.
3] Innovation is best fostered through collaboration, discourse, and a shared passion for one’s ideas and pursuits.
4] People love coffee and a great place to sit.
In order to design with these notions in mind, one has to put the traditional dichotomy of the library to one side and instead allow the building to become something with functions floating gently between park, forum, community center, café, river walk, and other such social amenities, while at the same time creating the infrastructure necessary to house the archive, situate the physical collections, and support the areas of innovation.
While technology gives us the ability to save lives, entertain, and otherwise create ease and efficiency as we go about our days, it also has the capacity to isolate us from one another. For this reason, we must foster facilities that bring us together and promote human to human interactions, lest we lose our ability to be empathetic, curious, and academically ambitious for the sake of altruism. Within the enclosure of this internet archive shall be housed the human spirit in its innumerable forms- be it the 1’s and 0’s as the internet caches softly blink and beep as millions browse from miles away, the laughter and discussion as a small group of surgeons sips espressos after a TED talk on 3D printing intelligent prosthetics, or perhaps the nervous pacing of a teenager waiting for his date (his first ever) to show up while he thinks of a million different cool ways to say hi.
