Bibliothèque du Québec Montréal, Québec 2003 Patkau Architects
on the middle ground, neglected or appropriated by the layout of a building: ‘Could not this neglect of the middle ground also, and more largely, allow us to think again about what it means to “design” a buildng in a location? For this to be so, topics of design such as distance, measurement and finally “space” would have to be reconsidered, as would design itself. If one could rethink the field or horizon of architecture along these lines, it would be possible to discover and devlelop practices of project making that acknowledge the existence of latent settings without trying to make them into something they never should be, permanently on show. Were we to try to conceive such spatial structure, we would accept the challenge of imagining a terrain with gaps or unclaimed areas, a discontinuous field, an uncommon ground. . . a mosaic field built up situation by situation, not taken for granted, like space, as an extended receptacle wanting infill.’ David Leatherbarrow,‘Architecture and Its Horizons’, Uncommon Ground , pp 18- 19
a five storey provincial library, la bibliothèque du Québec holds general collections, an historic Québec collection and a variety of public spaces including a lecture theatre, cafe, gallery, garden and bookstore. The collections are housed within two large wooden rooms, each with different characters. The Québec collection is in a grand room, inwardly focussed, with the stacks at the perimeter and reading areas within. The room for the general collection is a storage container for the various materials of the collection with reading areas outside its boundaries. — paraphrased from www.patkau.ca
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