Farhad Mirza

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Library in the Emerald Necklace, 2015

A proposal for a library that is made of a series of 'floating' volumes that are hung from an external steel structure to house stacks and an auditorium. The volumes jog and shrink to create partially enclosed spaces that are planted and washed in striated light from the metal structure.

On the site, the volumes mimic the form and scale of the existing pump house and visitor center nearby but are radically different in material and appearance. The posts of the exterior structure are made of metal fins of varying depths, this allows the entire complex seem rarefied and translucent when viewed from the front, and opaque when approached on the oblique.

(Studio taught by Grace La at the Harvard Graduate School of Design)