| Title |
Reprogramming the Library in Visaginas: A Multifunctional Public Institution For A Nuclear Town / |
| Authors |
Liubimau, Siarhei ; Kuč, Miodrag ; Čiupailaitė, Dalia ; Marx, Paul ; Mayer, Till ; Thomas, Rettig ; Betz, Johanna |
| ISBN |
9786094473562 |
| Full Text |
|
| Is Part of |
Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nuclear Town / Siarhei Liubimau and Benjamin Cope (eds).. Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2021. p. 126-158.. ISBN 9786094473562 |
| Keywords [eng] |
knowledge infrastructures ; library reprogramming ; digitalization ; de-industrialization ; urban planning ; urban development |
| Abstract [eng] |
This chapter summarizes and reflects on the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism applied work on functional re-programming of Visaginas public library, as well as presents the results of this work. This re-programming is disciplined by our research on the town’s context – the conditions after the nuclear energy and the path determined by the town’s initial nuclear specialization. The key components of this context are temporal dimension of nuclear de-industrialization, the meaning of the nuclear industry for Lithuanian national narrative, and the potential of Soviet nuclear town’s exclusive welfare legacy. The main value orientations of our work on the library re-programming are the need to increase library’s social inclusivity and functional diversity in comparison to the status quo, as well as the need to embrace the tendency of digitalization (and, broader, of diversification of the ways knowledge is produced and consumed). The presented functional re-programming is anchored to the current library building characteristics. In particular, the material condition for the developed reprogramming scenario is to preserve the building’s current modernist form. This re-programming scenario is developed for a single building, yet it is also co-articulated with the urban scale planning scenario. The spatial concept for this co-articulation is the Knowledge Park – a framework for integrated development of Visaginas cultural and knowledge sectors. Hence our aim is to create spatial scenario for the library as strategic institution and infrastructure within configurations of the production, archiving and distribution of knowledge in and around Visaginas. The argument of this chapter consists of four steps. First, we discuss how the specifically nuclear legacy of Visaginas challenges urbanist work. Second, we contextualize the work of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism in Visaginas in the stream of growing popularity of urban living labs approach to studying and designing cities. Third, we discuss the research decisions we took to better understand the status quo and the potential of the Visaginas public library’s main building. And, fourth, we present design decisions regarding reprogramming the library in broader context of development and planning of the town’s cultural and knowledge sectors. |
| Published |
Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2021 |
| Type |
Book part |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2021 |
