Spatial Fields of Knowledge: How Public Library Architecture Performs Under Public and Context

As newly constructed and renovated public libraries are designed to support a diverse interactive base, physical and digital information interfaces provide opportunities to explore their influence on increasingly responsive and transparent spaces. The internal, and to an extent, the external spaces of a library can be designed to respond to user needs while stimulating a combination of visual, intellectual, and social experiences. This paper presents a taxonomy on the present and possible futures of public library design through three lenses that focus on the library as a type of social environment, the visual and physical relationships between levels of public space, and the access to spatial fields of flexible interactivity. The libraries selected in this study represent distinctive responses to the planes in which they are constructed. This places interpretation of central or neighborhood library counterparts in terms of: (a) position in urban plexus and (b) engagement of public through the visualization of a social institution