Student Chinatown Library project featured at local mayoral candidate’s College Night
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Andrew Thomas, MArch ’09, presented the GSD student proposal for the Chinatown Storefront Library on April 30 at College Night, hosted by mayoral candidate Sam Yoon at the Hong Kong Lounge in Harvard Square. The Chinatown Storefront Library project, created by student volunteers in the Department of Micro-Urbanism, an art and design initiative at the GSD, will transform one of Boston Chinatown’s many vacant commercial, street-level spaces into a temporary, public library branch. Operating for a period of approximately three months, the project will provide urgently-needed services for a community that has been without a library since 1956, while creating a new advocacy tool for Chinatown’s efforts for a permanent library.
The temporary library insert in a storefront in Boston's Chinatown, scheduled to open this fall, will serve elderly residents, teens and pre-K/ K-age children, who are projected to be the heaviest users of an eventual Chinatown Branch Library. In addition to Andrew Thomas, the student design team includes coordinators Marrikka Trotter and Quilian Riano, Stephanie Tam, Julian Bushman-Copp, Mo Lee, Dan Hui, Trevor Patt, Shelby Doyle, Jungmin Nam, Theresa Hwang, and Matthew Swaidan. For more information on the project: http://insert-chinatownlibrary.blogspot.com/
Images: Furniture snaps into place in the three pods of the storefront library insert when more floor area is needed
and pulls away when the usual library functions are in use.