The Pedagogical Transit : Emancipating the Critical Spaces of the Library

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.