Makerlabs Makerspaces in libraries as modern spaces of urban belonging

Public Thresholds

Public Buildings are public space condensations traditionally conceptualized in binary perspectives: public-private, indoor-outdoor, accessible-restricted. Nevertheless, the complexity of social, political and economic structures deems such definition dated. Public Buildings are dynamic thresholds that change with the flow of publicity where a threshold is “a point […] above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not” 1⁠. Therefore public buildings are thresholds defined by the point–or limen– at which individuals enter public life to undertake collective action in a momentary foam that later disintegrates again into individual bubbles 2 [ 1 ].

Since public space is produced socially by a class and power conflict, public buildings also embody the self-augmentation tension of engaging in a collective 3 [ 2 ]. This tension is not static but changes according to the public condition. Individuals of different backgrounds come together to collectively act, whether watching a theatre play or debating the future of their neighbourhood. During that time-period, they re-define their shared cultural values of beauty, identity, belonging or democracy. If designed considering their role in the public sphere, public buildings can be a powerful tool to strengthen cultural values by providing a common space for civic connections and social interaction.

Cultural public buildings –those related to collective and common human practices such as libraries, museums or cultural centres– are the paradigm of cultural value creation. They exist to host the birth and proliferation of cultural practices that through interaction and conflict eventually become cultural values. Buildings last decades while cultural values transform at the speed of society. Therefore, conceiving public building as unfinished thresholds could make room for the creation and transformation of cultural values.

In recent late modernity, architectural practice’s success was defined by the amount and impact of its cultural building’s designs. Buildings were designed as global and interchangeable representations of modernity: Museums in China that could have been libraries in the US or Theatres in Switzerland that could become Casinos in Thailand. Cultural buildings became consumer products shaping local, national, and global identities. Nevertheless, the lack of connection with their immediate visible and invisible agents and ecologies limited their effect on the public sphere to eminently economic value (regeneration, gentrification, touristification). To avoid undesired effects and ensure positive impact on the public sphere, public buildings must incorporate collective knowledge into a building that is an open-ended process instead of a finished object. Public buildings as agents of the public sphere keep the purpose of facilitating through technical solutions the union of individuals to form a collective through a common activity while embracing their conflictive nature as spatial agents of a complex urban ecology [ 3 ]. Cultural public buildings combine collective interest into affordances and possibilities that host civic relationships.

As cultural public buildings, libraries are a representation of a specific civilization and demonstrate the values and aspirations of their immediate and extensive community. In late modernity, not only are external reference points fluid but there is also a continuous process of “self-actualization” or “life politics” as Anthony Giddens articulates it. Individuals “who using their own resources try to change the course of their own life” 4⁠. From a time when our life was defined by solid references (religion, profession, family) we shifted towards a situation where the definition of the self is completely dependent on the individual’s capability to continuously improve oneself. In this context of liquifying institutions and reflexive exploration of the self is where Makerspaces as community spaces emerge as a space for belonging to counteract alienating modern existence.

Makerlabs: experimenting with makerspaces in libraries

Democratization of knowledge has turned citizens into prosumers: producers and consumers. These terms not only refer to an economic exchange but also to a change of roles in cultural institutions. Prosumerism has turned cultural institutions –from which also libraries– into performative spaces 5⁠. In these spaces, users are expected to engage with the available tools in co-creation. Makerspaces in libraries are a great example of performative spaces because of their critical role in repurposing spaces for literacy. Whether focused on creativity or innovation, makerspaces in libraries share the goal of enlarging literacy beyond books.

The challenge of transforming libraries’ civic role is one of programmatic and spatial magnitude. On the one hand, new functions demand different activities, themes and ways of doing. On the other, giving new meanings to traditional building functions requires original design concepts and methods. The objective of the Makerlabs project is to demonstrate how a design intervention in an existing public library can activate the building’s agency in the public sphere, motivate use and human interaction and therefore produce cultural value dynamics in and around the makerspace.

The Makerlab project is a two-year collaboration between the Royal Library of the Netherlands, Delft University of Technology, Hogeschool Rotterdam and 4 pilot libraries per year cycle. The project departs from a co-creation process with library representatives, users and making experts clarifying the themes and cultural values of each makerspace. Later the PhD candidate translates the received input into a design blueprint where the functions and spatial gestures are presented. In that phase, Industrial Design students take over the given blueprint to design products or experiences that enhance the designed value-spatial framework. The last phase of this design experiment is to integrate the transdisciplinary research findings on makerspaces’ program, space and objects into a spatial intervention to be built in the library [ 4 ].

As the first case study of this Design Driven Doctorate, the project serves to prove a discursive methodology where there is a continuous back and forth between theory and practice, thinking and doing, words and drawings. Instead of following a linear approach, the research is designed to develop literature review and design premises simultaneously to maximise their synergy [ 5 ]. For example, designing the indoor-outdoor connection of the makerspace will bring the focus to what are the conditions of spatial publicity. Inversely, reading about Spinoza’s contributions to architecture leads to discovering designs such as the Fun Palace. The experiments will consist of a three-step testing process: designing, executing and reflecting on the intervention. Ultimately, the Makerlabs experiments will prove by design how the agency of a public building in the public sphere can be activated.