Mundaneum: A Library for the Information Poor

Graduate Architecture Design Studio

Washington University in St. Louis

Instructor: Catty Dan Zhang

A library for the information poor, this project draws inspiration from Borges’ “Library of Babel,” the ruins and decay of modern architecture, and the dross brought about by technological obsolescence. Despite, and perhaps in response to the digitization of media, the library does away with conventional cataloguing and organizing. Users are free to withdraw and reshelf books where they see fit. New organizations, associations, and adjacencies result. Books not typically shelved together become unlikely companions. Someone seeking a cookbook may also discover quantum mechanics. In addition, the library provides space for reproduction and digitization of books, carrying both contemporary and outdated technological devices to do so. Digital copiers and scanners are situated alongside printing presses. Books can be reinserted, reorganized, reassigned, amended, updated, and resituated in new ways. The architecture grows to accommodate the way the public has organized the content and media it houses. Modular expansion occurs to meet the shifting ways in which the library’s content is catalogued - a catalogue determined solely by the public.