Surrey City Center Library Landscape
Assignment
Find a landscape that is clearly associated with a particular culture or sub-culture group. Analyze the physical and cultural characteristics of the landscape (place) in order to clearly demonstrate the nature of the relationship that exist between the landscape and its users.
From your own observations show how the landscape is representative of the people who occupy it and the culture (subculture) which produced it.
You must visit and observe the landscape as part of your research.For this reason, you are not permitted to write about any landscape that you cannot visit in preparation for the essay.
You are free to include photographs, maps and other media to illustrate ideas contained in your paper.
Identifying a culture / subculture
For this assignment you must clearly identify a cultural or sub-culture group. Generally, the smaller and more identifiable the group, the more manageable this paper will be.
Identifying a landscape
The focus of this assignment is a landscape. Generally large landscapes such as entire city blocks are difficult to manage for this assignment. I encourage you to restrict the geographical scale of your landscape.
Here are some suggested landscapes that are a manageable scale: Shopping Malls, places of worship, places of business, play areas, homes, schools, parks….
Things to consider
Who occupies the place?
Who constructed the place?
For which user group was the landscape designed?
What are the values or priorities of the users/creators?
How does the landscape meet the needs of the occupants or the creators?
How does the landscape control or influence its users?
What symbols & significant objects are present in the landscape?
What are the buildings or features like?
In what larger context does this landscape exist?
In what way does the landscape communicate ideas, values or expectations?
How do the users treat the space?
Grading
Grades will be based on the following:
DISCUSSIONS
Identification & description of subculture group
Identification & description of landscape and its features
Description & discussion of how user group uses landscape
INSIGHT & LOGIC
Insight & perception
Logic & progression of ideas
Organization of thoughts
WRITING & LANGUAGE
Use of geographical thought and language
Grammar, word choice & editing
SCALE
Appropriate use of scale (scale of landscape)
Course:
Instructor:
Date:
Geographical Landscape versus Cultural Development: Surrey City Center Library-landscape (Vancouver-China)
It is most common that the landscape type such as hospitals, business malls, churches or even schools conveys a great extent to influencing the cultural developments of the populations that exist in the given region (Jodidio, 118). It is for this reason that this paper has set out to study this amazing phenomenon. The paper bases its study in one of the rising city states of China; Vancouver, from where the great "Surrey City Center Library-landscape" is found. The library is merely a study center yet stands to be a fantastic sphere of focus where it comes to its properly nursed man-made landscape.
One of the most fascinating factors that makes the Surrey City Center Library to be a perfect candidate for this assignment is its ability to unite societies of vast origins and views into a common cultural community. Vancouver is one of the rapidly growing cities in the entire British-Asian regions. Therefore, all sets of rich millionaires and billionaires have set to migrate into this mushrooming future giant-home. Secondly, there is a strong interest to the landscape’s design. Given the sole purpose of a library on one hand, and the other underlying aspects such as the surrounding communities on the other; designing a perfect landscape for this purpose is truly a task. However, BTA managed to utilize both the social media and the most recent technologies to come up with such an outstanding design at an utmost cost (Johnson, 22).
The Surrey City Center Library was designed by the Bing Thom Architects (BTA) who clearly understood the fact that book collection is no more the central focus when it comes to studies. The fact is the current vast advances in technology makes inter-library loans and electronic information the most convenient means of access most of learning material –archived or not. Today, libraries are not only a place for studies only; they are an elementary point of connection which allows the existing communities to meet and interact. Therefore, the only remaining aspect that libraries can offer their users to ensure comfort and maximum use is improving on the architecture or the basic landscape design. Understanding this helped the architects group find a whole new means to satisfy the landscape users. BTA sort to design a landscape that; once and for all, could administer to the social and culture requirements of the surrounding society.
To the outer side, the library occupies approximately 7,600 square miles to which it reflects the warp of the adjacent streets. The external cover of the library is rather contrasting to the inside. Externally, its horizontal sweeping and bulky concrete curves complement the prow-looking gazes. The formation, of course, finishes the landscape in a sinuous flourish. The inside does not bear a dimly-lit atmosphere but rather own an outward looking, clear space with a highly filled book edifice. The library now includes a rich mixture of huge and interconnected ‘high’ spaces. These spaces own a rich set of natural light and set such that each space has some ‘low’ spaces that allow personal time for both reading and writing activities, and access to the large book stacks on the far edges. Patrons explore throughout the building constantly to ensure that the specific assigned spaces are properly modulated. Take, for example, the ‘living room.’ It is one of the many ‘dramatic’ spaces in the landscape. The room holds a casual reading, and writing space, holds a double-space height up to the third floor, and is in line to the gigantic windows that face a public plaza east of the city.
The environment is comfortable enough to allow forward thinking and support all sectors of the society. The entrance is impressively high and with a bright ambiance leading to the reception space. Literally, the building’s design emanates both gravitas and excitement to the library visitors: First from afar, and then entice them with its vast internal adventure. BTA’s Thom says they could have eventually made a design that would be ample enough to resist both wear and vandalism in everyday use. However, the overall outcome would have been a very unfriendly and different given the immediate requirement place. "Instead, we designed with respect to the user" (Big Thomp, 2011).