Abstract:
This thesis begins in the noticing of a shift in the world, of new modes of existence,
of place and interactions, and of information and communication. This shift was first
experienced through the growth of the printing press, then through the rapid development
of electronics, and once again in the digital age. Every time a communication
boom occurs, it opens up a swell of opportunities, but simultaneously leaves the world
in disarray as different hierarchies dissolve, transform, and consolidate.
Each of these shifts also marks the process of a global capitalist expansion. Although
capitalism has proved fruitful in providing rapid technological and cultural developments,
through Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis, capital’s embodiment of their concept
called the body without organs shows that this progress is built upon a repeated cycle
of commodification and social repression. The instrumentalisation of architecture and
various knowledge systems became core apparatuses of control for its initial social
containment.
However, the conception and evolution of the public library represented a democratisation
of knowledge, a mediator between the increasingly literate public and new modes
of knowing. Its relationship with information facilitated a production of space that strays
outside the realm of capital, a scarcity in an increasingly neoliberal urban landscape.
But as the nature of information continues to fluctuate at an exponential rate, it presents
a new democratic condition that is often outside of its institutional reach. Using the
Auckland Central Library as a basis, this thesis speculates upon new ways of facilitating
urban discourse, dissemination of its third spaces through the cross-pollination with
the transport network.
