Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Erik Carver
Second Advisor
Aaron Forrest
Third Advisor
Jonathan Knowles
Abstract
Public space is an aggregate of differences, a place of exposure and adjacency to other lived social realities. The potential of public space is the confrontation or mediation of differences through interaction.
Public spaces are therefore about intersections and visual transparency between publics. Through architecture, we can create the conditions for contact with difference: with openness, transparency, density of program, and merging and splitting trajectories, we can work toward greater engagement in society.
As civic institutions, the bus station, an affordable method of transportation and movement, and the library, a crucial component of cultural infrastructure, can collide to create a space that sites this social exchange – centered around dialogue.
Busses are an inexpensive method of transportation, and are thus used by publics with little access to other means of more ‘hermetic’ travel. Similarly, libraries have evolved beyond an ‘archive’ model to a new type of node in an information network, a place where the dissolving components of knowledge and media are centrally accessible.
Recommended Citation
Ritts, Zoë, "Cultural infrastructure, public space, and the contemporary library in Toronto" (2017). Masters Theses. 194.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/194
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.