Infinite Library

The state of distress in which modern megalopolis lives constantly provides fluctuation, condensation, and expansions that affect
large areas, which may have been built with different purpose and needs in mind. In aftermath, large portions of urban landscape
lay desolate, abandoned waiting for regeneration.
Infinite Library: A library that records human knowledge should be in its nature cyclical and continuously growing. In
a sense, the city is a physical embodiment of this thought a state of continuos flux, in which random and conflicting forces
play almost as a human consciousness. One model for the metaphor is the Borgess story about the mythical Tower of Babel, in
his novel, Labyrinth. In this story, he introduces the idea of an infinite and its impossibility. Through exploration of literary forms
he takes unexpected turns and the narrative becomes regressive. It is as if the philosophical and literary archtypical subjects that
Borges uses are compounded into an unstable whole. A parable of the library as the ultimate model of knowledge and faith are
represented both physically and etymologically. The Library has no perceivable order. Somewhere on its numberless shelves sits
a catalog that no one can find; and amidst dizzying arrays of worthless junk, countless false catalogs exist. Human enlighten-
ment is there for the taking, but in this great intellectual mirage, no one can drink at the fount of knowledge. The Library, which
represents humankinds endless quest for order and wisdom, becomes, like the Tower of Babel, a symbol of chaos and ignorance.
The text and physical reality replete and modulate each other to the point we loose their distinctive definition. The process of
writing becomes enigmatic transcription of mathematical experiments, and formalist games creating fictional situations, but in
essence they are projections from reality, past or present. Thus, historical continuum is always regenerated. Perhaps, by trans-
lating the mythical story into modern day context Borges expresses anguish of time and anxiety that order as product of knowl-
edge brings. In essence, the sense of loss is embodied in the infinite space.
Architecturally, Babel as a historical place is located in ancient history, and as such, belongs to universal time. Its physical pres-
ence in context of Babylonian civilization is not as important as image it projects. The notion of mythological form is interpreted
through various religious, historic and literary texts. Likewise the locis, is ephemeral and situated in mythical space.
For my thesis I have chosen the site of Brooklyn Navy Yard, for temporal placement. Clearly, knowledge, time and physical object
of library are in reciprocal relationship. Therefore, this would be only a transient ground for library, which otherwise only exists in
our minds and eyes since the beginning of time.
Library as the physical manifestation of wisdom and knowledge, is difficult to conceive as a form in reality, but only as storage of
codes, orthographic signs, letters, and languages. Creating permanent all-encompassing library, as utilitarian corporeal object is
absurd, since library exists everywhere where there memory is found: metaphysical, or real, or simply where books are stored.
This idea of deductive and cyclical knowledge parallels logic of evolution through similar model of encoding. Therefore my proj-
ect is already impossible. The process of analytical forms used in physical processes is analogous to containment and decipher-
ing all thoughts recorded or otherwise transmitted through time.
Thesis statement: production of spatial sequences (city machine)
Program: Infinite library
Theme/Title: Narrative as a spatial strucure in the context of time/space compression
Literary Narratives for layers:
Henry James, Daisy MillerRome; place of decay and lost glorious past.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget New York City; drama with motifs of detective story mirrors intrigues of financial
subworld.
Ernest Hemmingway, Movable Feast Paris; a document of the city through the eye of flaneur, writer himself.
Louis Aragon, Paris PheasantParis; City as source of ideological process, a creative dialectical mechanism for subverting reality.
Unknown, BibleCrucifixionJerusalem; earthly and godly realms meet in the City
The geometries of the site are distilled and absorbed as a formal method for organizing parts. Library is made out of fragments found
in analysis of the site and its cumulative time alteration.
The interiority of the library operates, as time/space condenser comprised of different layers. These layers become spatial datums on
which past is projected, primarily in terms of plan. Layers like the immediate surrounding, an archeological repositoryNavy Yard,
represent historical episodes and are also images of mythical past.
Fragment of the space becomes an object, which is programmatically redefined and reinserted into unstable whole. Epigrammatic
reading and re-reading becomes a method of extraction. Conditions sustain contradiction between fragment and the whole.
My intention is by reading its structural logic instilled in spatial configurations is to reconnect them vertically.The mechanical structure
is reused for purpose of ordering urban layers. At some points certain layers become connected, other form discontinuous figures
The rotor of this evolving mechanism is at the center of the original place or first cartographic recordthe March Island, of then
largely uninhabited New York Bay area
Jerusalem: city of addition and subtraction; and finally collision; Metaphor of religious coexistence.
Rome: solid and void; street/square (public) spaces arranged as residue from the solidity of the fabric. Private spaces read as voids.
Paris: Rome after Rome; Axis of control create uninterrupted vistas, visible from interior of the block and the street: Interior of the
blocks: streets within blocks, building within buildings. Axis of main armatures become solid, block ,porous perimeter with interior
courtyards irregularly organized; reconnected at the second level through fabric of interior street network (Old City).
New York: inverted man-made landscape of skyscrapers. Skyscraper is typological object, a subject of economic force of real estate.
Reason detre of the form manifests in economic conception of public /collective land mapping in context of general timeextrusion
of the plot with the measure of the renting unit, office space. Grid as natural instrument of capital becomes tool for abstract measure-
ment. Poverty reinserts itself like madness within this illusive ordertenement fabric eats at the fringes of the grids boundary.
Nenad Stjepanovic 212.247.0084 nsproductions@earthlink.net