Philadelphia Library Branch
|
Adjacent to the NW corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, the Library Branch project questioned how to keep libraries relevant in today's digital age. This project takes the influence of the Philadelphia Row Home facade rhythm to generate intimate spaces for each age group of library visitors, while remaining a community that supports the importance of books and media in a city.
|
Philadelphia Library Branch
Architectural Design V
Professor: Vojislav Ristic
|
The open-outcry method of trading native to stock exchange “pits” of various financial cities in 20th Century America have been phased out due to the invention of digital trading. What was once a culture not only of competition but equally of comradery amongst brokers is ceasing to exist as these men, and some women, now sit behind as many as twelve computer screens. This method of trading carved the identity of Chicago as a major trading hub within America and gave opportunities to many middle-class workers; as a city that houses the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. However, the outcry is just one form of trade. Trading across the globe and within the United States has been in practice for centuries: the exchange of goods and bartering of prices. As the history of technology has influenced the way in which people perform a trade or in how goods are transported between cities and countries, the act of trading itself has only been slightly altered, it at all.
The history of trade has proven to be universal in its necessity amongst all people. Tracing oceanic ship routes between countries and cattle routes across states, information unraveled into the spaces necessary, or by circumstance of location, in which each trade took place. Understanding the architectural context of informal shipping docks and taverns, to the formalization of space needed for the pits and now endless computers, this archive leads to the documentation of the evolution of trade whilst honoring the cultures and personal interactions that trade technology is leaving behind. 
Click on the issuu icon for portfolio download
|
