Inside/Outside
Senior Studio, Yale College, Fall 2020Tasked to design a program for the area outside of the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, I was interested in the flow of bodies through the space around the library over time and the different activities that occur along those movements.
The library is right next to the New Haven Courthouse and across from the Green, two locations where historic protests focused on Black liberties took place. I therefore wanted to create an intervention that would give placement to the ideas of and needed programs for liberation.
I categorized those needed programs into four groups; cultivation, consumption, rest, and protest. In my reinterpretation of the space. I incorporated a natural landscape that is almost growing out of the library so that these programs could flow into one another and also be grounded in nature, which also speaks to liberating oneself from unnatural conditions imposed by societal norms. There are hilly enclosures where one can take shelter, smaller mounds for rest or to witness/participate in protest, an area for food consumption and distribution, a farming area, and an elevated stage for protest that has a greenhouse-esque space below.