Library Individual Post

The Salt Lake City Library is a beautiful place.  The architecture is breath-taking and the atmosphere is invigorating.  What stood out the most to me in this area was the giant stair case looking structure that descends from the roof of the building.  The overall shape of the Library is quite unique.  What surprised me the most while visiting was the beehive on the top floor. Who would have thought a Library would have bees? They were outside, but this was definitely the most surprising element.  I did not know that the Library had a coffee shop inside. In fact, something new I discovered about the area was that there are many coffee shops within just one block.  We saw two Salt Lake Roasting Co.'s (the real one and the mini one inside the Library) and a smaller coffee shop down the street by Smith's.

The space was primarily used for studying and reading.  After entering the book section, everything was basically silent. There was very little human interaction-- the only real conversation I saw was between the librarian and someone checking out a book. The lobby that is attached to the main entrance was echo-y and pretty loud-- it definitely encouraged human interaction with all the little shops to visit. So really there were two sections of the Library: one for silent reading and one for social interaction. 

In The Image of the City, Lynch talks about how the shapings or reshapings of architechture should be guided by a "visual plan" for the city: a set of recommendations and controls that would be concerned with visual form on the urban scale.  The object of this visual plan would be to strengthen the public image.  This definitely relates to the Library's unique architecture right in the middle of SLC.  Since it is right next to the City County Building, it is definitely in a location of much traffic and many different people wandering about the area. Perhaps the sloping stair-case shape serves to act as an inviting gesture for people to enter, "climb the stairs" into the Library.  Since it is the Main Library of SLC,  it is important that the structure be inviting as well as capturing.