PRESS
RELEASE
October 5, 2009
For more information
please contact:
Marrikka Trotter,
Department of Micro-Urbanism
contact@departmentofmicrourbanism.org
617.308.2137
For Immediate Release:
Opening Date: October 14, 2009
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: 640 Washington Street, Chinatown, Boston,
02111
The Department of Micro-Urbanism is pleased to announce
the public opening of the Chinatown Storefront Library, DMU’s latest project in
collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Boston Street Lab.
DMU would like to invite you to the opening of The
Storefront Library on October 14th at 4 p.m. The event will feature a lion dance and
light refreshments. The event is free and open to the public.
Rendering by Trevor Patt, DMU, Harvard GSD ‘09
About
the project:
The Storefront Library is a temporary public library for
a community in Boston which has been without its own branch of the Boston
Public Library since it was closed and demolished as part of the Central Artery
construction in 1956. DMU sees
this project as a way to increase the visibility of a distinctive Boston
neighborhood and help sustain the vitality of a community which culturally
serves not only Boston but the greater New England area.
About
the design:
DMU created a unique design/fabrication installation for
this project in collaboration with 12 students from Harvard’s Graduate School
of Design, who started a student group for this project called INSERT. The group meet every week
outside of class during the Spring 2009 semester to collaboratively design a
series of free-standing structures which would shape spaces and provide the
programmatic armatures required to transform a vacant storefront into a
temporary public library. Over the summer Julian Bushman-Copp, Trevor Patt and
Matthew Swaidan completed the design, and fabricated and assembled the units in
the GSD woodshop.
The Storefront Library INSERT accommodates innovative,
compact and flexible program space for children’s reading, internet access, and
multi-lingual book and periodical areas targeting Chinatown’s large elderly
population. The design is modular, portable, and reconfigurable; it can
be adapted to multiple locations and changes in use as the Storefront Library
project continues and adapts over time. At the end of the Storefront
Library project, the INSERT components
will be reused for other purposes within the community.
The Storefront Library will be operated by Boston Street
Lab for three months out of a storefront at 640 Washington Street, generously
provided by Archstone Realty.
Project
participants:
Julian Bushman-Copp, Insert design team
Leslie Davol, Bosotn Street Lab
Sam Davol, Boston Street Lab
James Delaney, DMU collaborator
Shelby Doyle, Insert design team
Dan Hui, Insert design team
Mo Lee, Insert design team
Trevor Patt, Insert design team
Jungmin Nam, Insert design team
Theresa Hwang, Insert design team
Quilian Riano, Insert project coordinator
Maria Santos, DMU collaborator
Jonathan Santos, DMU collaborator
Matthew Swaidan, Insert design team
Stephanie Tam, Insert design team
Alicia Taylor, GSD, volunteer
Andrew Thomas, Insert design team
Marrikka Trotter, Insert project coordinator
Kathleen Thornton, GSD volunteer
Jegan Vincent de Paul, DMU collaborator
Jonathan Evans, Director, Social Change and Activism,
GSD
Stewart Gohring, GSD, volunteer
Annie Kountz, GSD, volunteer
Acknowledgements:
DMU would like to thank the following for their support,
time and donation: Shawmut Design and Construction, in partnership with Bent Electrical
Contractors, Angelini Plastering, and Mark Richey Woodworking, Maharam, and
Compass Flooring. Many thanks to:
Shawmut Construction employees who volunteered to move the project from the
GSD, where it was fabricated, to Chinatown and assemble it in place. Special thanks to Leland Cott, FAIA, of
Bruner/Cott Architects and the GSD, for all his generous support and for
facilitating the partnership with Shawmut Design and Construction and its
subcontractors. Also we would like to say thank you to The GSD Community
Service Fellowship Program and a GSD alumnus, Tony Kwan, for his generous
funding contribution, which enabled students to work over the summer, and to
the GSD Student Forum and Social Change and Activism, who also donated funding
to this project.
The Department of Micro-Urbanism [Marrikka Trotter and Jonathan Santos, co-founders] is an art and design initiative aimed at mapping terrains, discovering
relationships, addressing issues and exploiting opportunities at the pedestrian
urban scale. The initiative’s mission is to expand the space of
possibility for agonistic public action, interaction and involvement by
initiating, supporting, and realizing creative interventions in the everyday
landscape and by increasing public understanding and appreciation of the
historical and contemporary political, infrastructural, and socio-economic
flows and forces which shape this common terrain. While participants for
each project vary, the Department of Micro-Urbanism draws from a loose network
of artists, designers, architects, community leaders and individuals who share
the desire to reinforce public space, rethink and extend the possible, and
engender and engage in alternative tactics of practice.
Website
Links:
http://departmentofmicrourbanism.org/
http://insert-chinatownlibrary.blogspot.com/
http://www.storefrontlibrary.org/
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