inter[face]: Athenaeum Redux

Richard Sennett in The Private Realm offers,“the difference between public and private lies in the amount of knowledge one person or group has about others; as in a family, one knows others well and close up, whereas in a public realm one does not; incomplete knowledge joins to anonymity in the public realm.”This idea of access to knowledge can also be applied to the content of private institutions. The Athenaeum, a private, members-only, library and museum collects and displays world-class artifacts to its members. To invert this private/public condition, we propose to move the interior spaces to the exterior thus blurring the border (as Sennett would call this condition) between inside and outside –knowledge is made accessible to the public. While pushing the knowledge to the periphery we also pull public conditions to the interior of the building.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AMP.105.55

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-07-4