librarypunk - 019 - I Simp for Concrete

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

We’re talking buildings! Are you ready for some Brutalism? Learn about the trauma room at SPL, the joys of concrete, and Jay’s ideas for hate scissoring fanfic.   Library lists Beautiful Libraries Around the World Every Booklover Should Visit The World's Most Beautiful Libraries | Condé Nast Traveler  The 20 most beautiful libraries in the U.S.  The 25 Most Beautiful Libraries in America Best Libraries in the World - Ranking The Top 35 Best Libraries in The World | Coolest Libraries 2020 Visit 28 of the Best Libraries in the World The Case For Saving Atlanta's Ugliest Library National Library of Kosovo – Pristina, Kosovo   Readings How Andrew Carnegie Built the Architecture of American Literacy    11 replies on “Grate Job, Guys: Cornell Fine Arts Library Privileges Architecture Over People”  Carrie’s post on library furniture: https://seadoubleyew.com/598/the-librarys-furniture/  Ending music: https://pixabay.com/music/metal-ultra-metal-253/

I don't know where the theme song is. I'll add that in post. Beedoo do, do, do, do, do, do. Good job, Jay. Yay. Oh, I just took the best fucking picture, Arthur. Awesome. Going to drop it in the group chat.

That sounds great. So, yeah, we're going to talk about buildings and stuff. This is a carry heavy episode, delightfully. Thanks. I hope so. Yeah, I love buildings. I'm a real architecture nerd. And for those of you who don't know,

my brother is a professional architect and has ADHD. So as you might imagine, he hyper focuses on buildings. And I also happen to be interested in buildings. And so with that combination of me being a sponge for information and a brother who talks at me all day, every day, for 30 plus years. I know a lot about buildings. So let's talk about library buildings.

Has the ALA done any shit this week? Oh, have they? I don't know. I haven't really been on Twitter. I don't think they have. It's a blessedly ALA bullshit free week. Yeah. Has it been a pretty bullshit free week?

I think so. I mean, there was that big libraries thing, but I think that was the end of last week, and I didn't read it, and that wasn't ALA. I've been too concerned with the Cannes Film Festival this week and Timmy Shalmay's great outfits. Yeah, that's fair. It's been a good week. Also, I finished The Godfather too, finally.

So it's been a good week. That's awesome. Fredo got got, it was sad. Spoilers. Okay, for those of you who aren't already aware, I rode my bike a bunch this weekend. So that was cool. Where do we want to start with big library buildings?

Nice tie in there. Do we just want to dive right into Vacational Awe and the thousands upon thousands of 20 most beautiful libraries lists? I'm just about to say all the lists. All the listicles. Yeah. Like what the fuck is up with all the beautiful libraries, an amazing library, a stunning library, the best library.

Like it didn't say anything about their services or how they serve their community. It's like purely aesthetic, which like I like a good pretty library too. I've been to the bodily and it's great. It's beautiful. But I have no idea what they do for their student. I've been to the Iowa Capitol Law Library and it is gorgeous. Salt Lake was on one of those lists. They actually do really good community stuff too. That's cool. They deserve that recognition. Do you think that like every library worker goes through that period where like they're all about that kind of thing. And they like, like, talk about how like they want to see libraries when they go on vacation

and they like have the like, I love books, mugs. And then transitions back out of that as like reality sets in and you realize that like working in libraries is like not actually like a third, not like a third tier of heaven. I'm showing the Mormonism thing again. Which planet are you on right now? The one with the most beautiful. libraries, obviously. I mean, if you're into like pretty buildings in general.

I mean, Mormons do love pretty buildings. I weirdly think the temple's really pretty. It's like a Frankenstein's monster of architectural styles. And yet when it's at night and those lights are on, baby, it works. Have you been in one before? I haven't been in the temple, obviously. And I haven't been into any of the others. But I've like walked around the temple a bunch.

I've been in one before it was a dedicated, the Fresno. temple because they actually let just random lay people go into before they're dedicated. I have not actually been in one for any religious purposes. Thank God or not thank God. Whatever, however you want to interpret that. Thank Maroni. But they are super cool buildings, but yeah, they're temples. I've been in the big conference center for a Christmas concert. But yeah, so it's like I, even before I was a librarian, or even wanted to do that kind of thing. I was like, ooh, this is a pretty library building, but, you know, more of like the aesthetics of it, I guess, which all of these lists, that's all it is anyway, is like the aesthetics of what is a cool library? Is it this like Beauty and the Beast

library ideal kind of thing? Like, I think it's like if you grew up and watched Beauty of the Beast then. Yeah, I feel like there's some other like good movies with like good libraries send them to, but I also like, I mean, if you like good architecture, I think there's something to be said about that too. However. However. Let's talk about ugly libraries. Hell yeah. So there have been a few people who've said that the National Library of Kosovo,

which is actually how it's pronounced. I found that out because I don't know. I've met people from there. In Pristina is the quote, ugliest building in Europe. I love it. But it is, I fucking love it too. like caged brutalist like if if you're going to have a fucking library in the Balkans this is what

it should look like like I love brutalism yeah and it's just like it's so cool it gets wasted on like university basketball gyms that is not a waste any use of any use of brutalism is a great use of it. I love how the the like university basketball stadium ones. They always look like nipples. It was like a boot with a nipple on top. Yeah. Oh, that, um, oh, you're probably

specifically referencing the Coliseum at the University of Illinois, which looks like a goddamn spaceship and I love it. Also at University of Utah, it legit looks like a titty with a nipple on it. It's pretty good. That tracks. Yeah. Well, like when of Frank Lloyd writes like little

apprenticeses, um, went to that law school, that architecture school. And so there's a lot of that kind of shit in Salt Lake, lots of cool architecture. Nice. Yeah. So slightly post-prary style. Yeah. Like you'll get like the like, was it polygamous or is it a duplex building?

And then you'll get the like Frank Lloyd Wright. Like is this New Mexico buildings? And then you'll get like a random brutalist building. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's great. Yeah, we get some good brutalism up here too. I work in a semi-brutalist campus.

And I freaking love it. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the best part about the U of I campus is that fucking spaceship thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Like that's some good brutalism there. And that great curves. The like performance art center. Oh yeah. The Kranert Center. Yeah. The Kranert Center. That one's good.

The stairs. Yeah. Yeah. They've got, yeah, that's a good like brick brutalism, which I don't always love brickbritlism. Brickdilism. Which is what I call brick brutalism. But yeah. I mean, like good institutional.

architecture brings us to another point. So a lot of this comes from, so like, the, the mass of brutalist libraries comes from an era of good public funding for buildings, both in the government sector. So that's why like a lot of government buildings, especially on the national mall, and especially throughout the United States, like Boston City Hall is a brutalist masterpiece, etc. There are some beautiful public housing projects that were brutalist or designed for community housing projects, projects like Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdi in Montreal, which is one of my favorite buildings of all time.

The Geisel Library at San Diego State or at, yeah, San Diego State University in, yeah, which is a beautiful, beautiful building. I drew it and might be getting some swag for that I found out recently. I love how it's like upside down. Yeah. Top heavy. It's pretty good. Yeah.

That is some good design. Some good upside down design. Yeah, some good upside downsies. Yep. I love it. So like a lot of, you know, amazing and like a lot of public libraries come out of this time too. And they're also like kind of designed a lot of this way like because with concrete you can get in these like kind of strips of windows which solve like a lot of energy crisis issues with like heavy like heavy

siding thick walls very easily built which insulates you're building really well with that does that have anything to do with like natural light being bad for books because I feel like so many modern libraries now are just glass yeah I know I don't think they really knew that they were just like I don't think they were that aware that like UV was bad for books like they were just yeah good for energy yeah i don't think they were at i don't i wasn't really in their heads back then but like oh we now very much no we i'm not like that like in tuned with uh designers of the 60s and 70s i will say that like of those beautiful library lists the one that gets me every time is I forget, is it Yale, the one that's the rare book library?

Yeah, yeah, the viney. Yeah, the one that's made of, it's marble. It's a few slight through it. And I was just like, that's perfect. It's such a good combination of utility and just design. Impact. Yes, I want to walk into that fucking square of marble and discover things. I applied to a position there and I didn't get it obviously.

and I'm kind of sad. Like, I love my job now, but like, what if I got to work at the Bainiki? Like, a Jay can have little of vocational awe for the Bainkey building. That's your allotted pocket of vocational law. My allotted. We each, like, that fucking marble. We each get a little for a treat, like, as a treat. Like, I think, like, I think you're allowed a little as a treat every now and then.

Like, for me. The work I do is good sometimes. For me, like, it's the Regenstein Library. at University of Chicago, like, I, like, have such a sensual affair with that, like, the physical materials of that building. Like, not the books. Nothing like that. It's just the fucking concrete of that built. Like, it's made out of this beautiful textured con. I'm just, I love concrete. Who doesn't? Concrete fan girl. I'm a concrete fan girl. Like, I just like, it's, I am such a Simp for concrete. Let me tell you, Jay. That's the title of this episode, Simper Concrete. That's it. Simp for concrete.

Like I, like we, I, so I took library buildings, uh, in school and, uh, we did a, we did tour in Chicago and we spent, so it was when they were building the Helmet Yon, uh, edition, which is the Monts, Montuado edition. I got to say that one right, which is an egg. where they do their, they have their robot. That's a mass retrieval system and some study area and it's underground, but there's an egg on top of it.

And it's designed by the late great German architect Helmut Jan, who designed the Thompson Center as well as the Oraria library and Denver, Helmut Jan, who is a glass man, not to be confused with an ass man, although you never know. Why not both, right?

Why not both? Why not both? Yeah. So anyway, they were constructing that when we went and visited and they gave us the rundown of all the planning and stuff that was going on with it. But anyway, we got to go on a backstage tour of the Regenstein Library and I was just like overwhelmed with the concrete and I was just like sensory overloading the site of the building and like stroking it.

And like I wrote an essay about the sensual. the sensory experience with the Regenstein Library. I would read the shit out of that, Carrie. Yeah, where is that? Erotics of concrete, like, bitch. I don't know. I was going through some stuff. I was going through some stuff that summer.

You're having a moment. Yeah, with the Regenstein Library. Anyway, that's my favorite building only because of the texture of the concrete. I love a good textured concrete. Like, for me and the other one is like the Phillips Exeter. library by Louis con. He's a piece of shit, but like amazing, brutalist architects. May I ask a question?

For sure. So as far as I know, still, U of I is the only library school program that has like a library buildings course. So at least that was true when I went, right? Yeah, I don't know. And that guy's still working there, I think. Fred? He's retired yet.

Yeah, I don't, I think Fred's retired yet. He's old. Well, he was still working when I was there. Yeah. And I've never heard a single bad thing about that course. Like everyone I know who took it said that that was their favorite course they ever took it. You by. He's a he's a retired director of the Urbana Free Library. He looks like. Which is a great library. Yeah. He looks like Vladmere Lennon. Yeah, he's great. And like just like a total delightful human being. And I took it over the summer too. So like we were just in there for like five hours, five or six. hours a day and just like we went up to Chicago and like stayed at the holiday in and Tinley Park and he like took us around to all these libraries and he taught like and we were just like hanging out with him and drinking with this old man and like don't let the don't let Twitter hear that they'll get mad at you oh no and like he was getting pictures and like

he would just like point to different people and he was like hey you're getting a little empty. Yes. Like, you're like, Russell, you're getting a little empty. Like, Kevin, give me your drink. Like, you know, stuff like that. So I guess my question is, if that's as far as I remember, the only class like that is offered in like a library school and it's an in-person course, how would you recommend librarians who might be interested in this kind of thing, like learning more? and why would you recommend someone learning about library building?

Yeah. So like it is so valuable because it makes you think about space differently. First and foremost because space is so important to what we do. Even though like, you know, people are like, everything's online. Your building is still important because you have to like, number one, like in any library, especially in academic institutions, especially in school libraries, school libraries really need to. to think about their space really intelligently. Special libraries, any kind of library that has to share space with other entities needs to think

about their space very intelligently and needs to be able to talk to people about their space. So that's why I recommend a course like this is so you can talk to people about your space intelligently and know different ways of understanding your space too. So like I learned how to read blueprints from this sort of like and understand scale and how to use like an architectural ruler and interpret drawings and things like that. We learned how to analyze floor plans and find errors in them for reading for safety, reading for lighting design, reading for ADA. So learning how to assess spaces for the Americans with the Disabilities Act. So that's a really, really important thing. Assessing spaces for any kind of purpose.

So how to do assessment plans for any kind of purpose. So I'm on committees now for building assessments for like accessibility and inclusion for different spaces. So thinking about things in regard to your building, like and even how to think about HVAC systems and stuff like that. Like we learned how to like talk to people about HVAC systems and stuff like that. Like just stuff you would never think about. Yeah. Yeah, in my experience working in IT, we tend to work pretty closely with a lot of facilities apartments. And like, I have crawled into the ceilings of libraries and under, well, I didn't have to climb under it because it was infested with rats and rat poops.

So I was saved there. But yeah, no, it really makes a difference if you know how your building is laid out. But yeah, like HVAC systems and stuff, I think that really anybody who has any sort of, sort of decision-making capability and a library should really know that stuff. I don't know. And also, like, one of the things when I started my job, so at U&H, so, you know, they do that thing where the librarians are faculty and then their staff who are not librarians, even though they do, like, the librarians tend to do more of the like policy planning, vision type work. And then the staff are the ones that do more of the material work. I'm not saying one type of work is better

than the other. But one is worth more. I mean, we do a lot of vision stuff, but just saying that they only count the faculty as librarians. And I'm putting big air quotes around that. I don't agree with that decision. That's how we are. And for faculty, they like, and Utah always like this, too, they like to give us offices to ourselves that have the Florida ceiling walls because we also have to work on scholarship and have all these meetings and stuff, where our day-to-day work isn't necessarily you sit down and you, you know, do like cubicle type work. Like, it's a lot of, like, I need to just focus. Not that other people don't need that. But it's like, well, faculty are special and we get that. And, you know, air quotes around all this. But when I started,

the only faculty, the only office like that available was not in my department, spatially. Now, granted, we just got rid of departments. We're in a matrix program, programmatic structure now, and so there are no departments anymore. But my office is actually up with the reference and instruction people, even though I'm not a reference and instruction person. But most of the faculty are. The only sort of space available in the tech services area wasn't a Florida ceiling office. It was mostly closed off, but it was open at the top. So if I needed that uninterrupted time, I might not necessarily get it.

And that affects who, if I am on campus, which I've been working from home longer than I ever got to be on campus. But when I am, that affects the people I interact with even casually. I rarely even met the staff in the department that I'm a part of just by nature of where my office was. So I guess I don't know if like you talked about that kind of thing in your library buildings. course at all. So not just like the technical aspects of the building and books and ADA stuff, but even just like the context of where work happens. And I don't know, I don't want to say consequences, but just like, do you get what I'm saying like the context of where things are placed and how that affects work? Yeah. This was like 11 years ago.

So. You slept since then. That's what my dad says. slept since then. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm sorry. I can't, I don't remember. Well, do you have opinions? I also like Harry opinions. I mean, yeah, people should think about that stuff. Like, obviously, people need to think about those things. Like, I think having had a course like that, it puts you in a problem solver sort of mode. And I think this is also part of my personality, too, is that, like, I'm a bit. of a problem solver sort of person that like you pay attention to things like that like if someone is working primarily with

your department they should be like you know house within your department they did give me a choice they said you can have the not quite full office but down in the tech services or you can have the full office up in the reference

they did give me a choice yeah but like is that a proper accommodation? Right. Wink. Yeah. Is that a reasonable accommodation? Which like reasonable is always determined by able-bodied people.

Oh yeah. No, I'm in the process of getting like formal accommodations right now for like my ADHD and other other such things. And it's like, you know, my doctors and everything had to like verify all the stuff that I said. And then it's been like a month or two now and I haven't heard anything back because it's people who aren't me or my doctors getting to decide what kind of formal help I get, which is a fucking blast. And that's like one of the other problems with like ADA stuff. So like from having taken that course and learning about ADA accommodations and like what kind of door handles you have to have on your doors and like, you know, widths of things and, you know, your bookshelves need to be a certain width and like what types of lighting are best versus like what will get you by. you know and even with like green building lead certification things like that like what is and i i think about this like with every level of finishing that you can do for like a building like like you can

always do something like the minimum way and then you can always do something the right way and that goes for every freaking thing from like accommodations to how you build something to how you lay out your freaking office, right? So, and I think that shows a lot. Yeah, that's like a massive problem for public libraries too. Like every library I've worked out, I've worked out a couple of very small libraries where, you know, any sort of give and take in just a bookshelf or two can, you know, decide whether or not it's on the very bottom, which is not accessible or, you know, that kind of thing. And we just did an EDI survey. And then one of the number one groups who said that they didn't feel like they belonged in our libraries was disabled people. And it's just such a huge part of it.

Like even from things like, you know, web accessibility all the way down to physical spaces, if you don't have disabled staff to point it out or people who are trained like this course that you had, it's just going to get missed, which is a huge shame. Anyway, sorry to derail. So we talked about the library lists. Yeah, I'm curious about this Seattle Public Library PTSD, like Twin Peaks red floor in the notes. Like what kind of black lodge? I haven't seen a picture of it.

It's not just a floor. It's like the whole interior is red. Did they just make a Black Lodge library? No, no, no, no. No, the whole interior is red. Like Scorsese red. Red, red. Yeah, like floor walls, ceiling.

It's the fourth floor of the central branch of SPL. And I mean, it's been years since I've been there. Is that where the Turfs present? That's where the Turfs present. Yeah. So they won library of the year for it. Yeah. They actually had IT positions come open around that time, and I was like...

Oh, all the trans women quit. Yeah, exactly. I was just like, and I think this may be completely conjecture on my part. Carries on the drops. But I think that's about the time that Becky Yose stopped being a systems library in there, too. Oh, right, because she does her own, like, consulting now. She has her own consulting company now. Right.

I love her. I love her to do. death. Shout out to Becky. Shout out to Becky. But yeah. And so I saw those positions open and was like, nope. Nope. No, thank you. Like, it was at the beginning of the pandemic too, so there's no way in hell I was moving to Seattle. But, but yeah, so SPL's branch, it's the fourth floor and it's their meeting spaces except for their like large auditorium. And it is literally just the same like blood, bright red, from ceiling to floor to sides. Like, I remember there being like kind of a weird texture to it too.

Like it was very like like curvy, like the walls. And it was so disorienting. And like I remember like walking down that hall and just being like, wait, where the fuck in the building am I? Like the whole building. Like Laura Palmer hanging out on a couch somewhere. Yeah, no, it was that kind of weird ass experience. And I remember even back then I was just like, why did this? make this choice? Why red of all things? Like if you're going to have an entire floor dedicated

to one color, why is it the alarm color? Yeah, that's not very trauma-informed of you. No, no. It's like a very weird choice. Like, that's why like hospitals don't have red in them, right? Library of the year. Beel. That's how you get money, right? You just let TERFs talk and then you make it a moral thing of you being good. and then you win money from it. Free speech. Yes, the freeze peach. Mama free speech.

But my free speech. But mama, my free speech. I'm gender critical. Gag. Fucking Terps. I want like a really bad fanfic of like an anthropomorphize Seattle public and Toronto public like hate scissoring each other.

Like not the people, not the directors, the buildings. Can we get some fan art? I mean, we did get our actually. Anthropramorphize libraries. Actually, we did get our first work of library punk fan art. We did? We got a meme like. Oh, the one of you and Justin.

Yeah, Steve. The like rainbow goth GFs. Yeah, the rainbow goth. And the, yeah, the rainbow and. Gough, hot guffs. Are you the hot goss BFs? Duh. Because both of us are hot goths. Yeah, but it said Carrie. I'm the rainbow in my own relationship. And then I have the hot emo wife. Yeah, but the names are deceptive. We don't talk about that. Don't out my last name on this podcast. I won't, I promise.

Yeah, see, I'm the... Jay, we know you're the hot goth one in your relationship. I am, but I'm also the podcast boyfriend. It's a... I am large. I contain multitudes. It's okay. Oh, Arthur, are you playing with my...

My phone cord, bubub? You excited? You get the zoomies? My phone just got almost yanked off. I was like, oh, okay. I want to see a picture of the Seattle Public Library Red Room. Some fucking Kubrick shit. Where should I go look at a picture?

Yeah, I wonder if we can find... Because I've only seen like outside pictures. Yeah. Yeah. The outside does not, no. You know, does not reflect the whole thing. Because I found like a big feature of it is the the nonfiction spiral. So it's just like this continuous spiral up several floors.

This is a weird looking building. It is bizarre. Oh, it's all the natural light. Yeah. It's one of those two. Yeah. It sticks out like a sore thumb in downtown Seattle. I was just like every time I go there, I'm like, oh, oh yeah, that's right.

Carrie, when you were there, when you were at UYUC, did they have a thing towards the end of the year where they had people from Seattle Public come and do like a job talk kind of thing if they had open positions? Absolutely not. They totally did that when I was at UYUC, people from Seattle Public. There were no jobs anywhere when I was at school. Because the way Seattle Public is hiring is they do like an open pool thing. And you don't apply for a specific position. you just like put your whatever in the pool and then they or something like that but they did a little they came they like fucking flew to Illinois no no no one told me anything about anyone getting jobs anywhere ever yeah there were no jobs like there were no jobs oh my god is this the what the fuck is this I found the picture of it the red hall I put it in the chat so disorienting

I really want to address the architect who decided that this was the thing and kick their ass. We can find out. This is like the fucking like the thing you would stand in line at like Disney World for a scary roller coaster or something like one of the bits of space mountain or something. There are no windows too. Not that I can remember if there are. There are very few in Farbertsman. Yeah. Literally, Carrie, the first one you post.

said I'm like, is that a set from the movie X Machina? I haven't seen that. No, it's just the turf library. Like, I love that red, but in a library? Yeah, I'm wondering if they're regretting that choice now. Do people have like panic attacks in there? I know someone who said she was triggered with PTSD and she couldn't go in there. Shit.

It is a very Scorsese-Red. What is this weird, like, spaceship window? there we go okay who is oh it's rem cool hoss my boy I love REM he would do that he's an asshole yeah he's a deconstructivist what does that mean flex your knowledge it's postmodern architecture

it's a portmanteau of constructivism and deconstruction which deconstruction itself is already Mento. Clever. Yeah. Derrida found dead. But yeah. No, Rem Koolhaas has this great essay called Junk Space that I'm a big fan of anyway.

Have you mentioned about before? Probably. It's all about like strip malls and like like I think I've heard of this. Yeah, it's all about strip malls and stuff like that and like the meaningless architecture of now. Yeah, I think I've heard of that article. I think it's like, I think maybe on like McMansion Hell, I think she talked about it one time when talking about postmodern architecture and like the like not like strip mall

kind of architecture. Yeah. So like that's what like postmodernism is. It's like there's like branches of postmodernism, right? So there's like the Michael Graves postmodernism, which is like he designed the dolphin hotel at Walt Disney World. Oh, that. Yeah, that's him.

He also had a line for Target in the early 2000s of, like, tea kettles and stuff like that. They're actually kind of cool. But his architecture is terrible. And it's like kind of what a lot of contemporary strip malls are based on, like higher-end strip malls were based on the architecture of Michael Graves, but like flattened out into a prairie style. Yeah, where they have this sort of like Like the fan style thing Yeah

Or like yeah like a little Like almost like neoclassical but yeah Like accents but like a geometric neoclassicism Yeah, classicism So there's kind of that That's kind of like a Michael Graves sort of approach Is how I would describe his sort of deal And I don't know if that's really fair

But And that's kind of like what the Harold Washington Library is Chicago, which is cited on a lot of those lists. There's actually a really great documentary that I watched in my library building's class about the construction, like the contest and construction of that library. There's a bunch of other assholes involved in the contest for that, including Philip Johnson, who, if you are a fan of bad gays, there's a great episode on him.

Yes, he did that fucking glass house. Yeah, the glass house. That asshole. Yeah. That asshole. Yep. Because that house is gorgeous, but he's a bastard. He's awful.

He's a bad gay. Well, Glass House is a knockoff of Mies van dero, so. Oh, well. You can't feel that good about it. Never mind then. Yeah, fuck him. So anyway, yeah, Michael Graves is like, basically he, yeah, this is totally, yeah, strip malls are, like, kind of all based on, around Michael Graves.

Anyway, I fucking hate Michael Graves. And, but, like, a lot of contemporary, like, library architecture, I would say is, like, Michael Graves-esque. So there's, like, a lot of, like, postmodern, contemporary libraries, I guess, is what I would say, since so many libraries were like built and renovated in the 80s and 90s, given like the, so like, at least like where I'm from, that's kind of what I experienced is like a lot of like postmodern libraries. Would you say that like the like all glass exterior kind of thing? Is that a Michael Graves thing or is that another thing? Because I know

the Salt Lake City public, the main branch there is like the all glass exterior kind of. thing, like glass and concrete. The glass and concrete. Well, because in salt, like, you have to have, like, some sort of concrete thing because there are earthquakes. And so, like, like, you would probably actually really like the University of Utah, like, the Marriott Library where I worked. Because, like, the main building of it, they had to redo to put all of these, like,

Oh, that's much more. Exactly. Okay. Put these, like, fucking, like, giant, like, concrete and cable X's over the entire exterior just to, like, make it earthquake safe. And it's really cool looking. I'll drop a picture in the in the group chat. But yeah, like the Salt Lake Public one is like this like cool crescent curve, but it's all glass.

Yeah, no. Moshe Safdi is actually one of my favorite architects. He did. It's a cool building. He's a, he actually has done some brutalism. Oh, I could see that. Yeah. So he's in Habitat 67.

Yeah, I'd be curious what you thought of the Salt Lake public because it's got the like natural glass thing. But yeah, it's a nice cool crescent. shape. It's very nice and open on the inside, which is good. Yeah, no, he does really cool stuff. Yeah, he did the, like, he did the coffin center in Kansas City, too, which is the performing art center, which is like concrete and glass face. So it's basically concrete based with like a big glass face. So he works really well with concrete and then does like glass faces. So a good combo of the two. Yeah. So he's essentially like, and he did Crystal Bridges too. So he's essentially like a

brutalist who transitioned into postmodernism. It's kind of how I would describe him. Let's just talk architecture. Fuck it. So that's like kind of how I would characterize that. No. Michael Graves is kind of like, I would describe his architecture style as like a fancy doctor's office or like it is not like what I would consider cool.

Like I said, he did the dolphin hotel at Walt Disney World. Anyway, that's an example of another style. of postmodern architecture. I'm posting some Jay Willard Marriott Library external shots in the chat. Yeah, that's pretty fucking cool. Yeah, that's how it's like earthquake proofed. Oh, yeah.

Those X's. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You get a nice triangular shape to provide that nice reinforcement. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so let's talk about kind of some of the history of library construction and styles of libraries.

So in the United States, one of the earliest styles of library to prevail was the neoclassical style. And that largely reigned supreme well into the 1930s and 40s, largely because of the Carnegie Library System. They were designed to be essentially designless. So they just kind of constructed them fairly cheaply, which actually turned out to be because of when they were constructed, they were constructed well for the most part. But they're designed largely without much architectural thought. So you get a lot of these pretty similar kind of big square buildings in towns throughout the United States. I've been to one. Fun fact.

The one where my brother lives, they have like the old fashion. I call them upskirt stacks, which have the glass floors. They had them in the math library at UIUC too. Yep, I was not to ask. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they have the old glass floors, which those stacks are also a terrible fire hazard because fire travels up and books are very flammable.

And when your stacks are just like a floor straight, like all the, so basically the way the stacks are designed is the floors are glass. And all of the floors, all the stacks are just one big unit in the building. there's no floors separating the stacks. So if one thing catches fire, all of it catches fire. And we know what happens because we watch Name of the Rose. Yeah, and they didn't have sprinklers when they built these either. So if you ever want to set a library on fire, find one with glass floors. There you go.

All you aspiring arsonists listening. All you aspiring Umberto Eco fans? The two Carnegie's that, well, I've been inside one of them. And then there's another one here in the town where I live now that, as I was saying in the chat, is actually now run by the local tribe and is a cultural history museum instead of a library, which is rad. But I don't know if this is because it's the Pacific Northwest, but they tend to. to be more like Victorian-styled. So maybe the ones I've been to aren't like like the rest of the Carnegie kind of. It would be really interesting to compare.

I think they adhere to like local styles a lot and use like local materials. So it's from what I saw they're like usually built to suit the local style and use local materials. That makes sense. But I also kind of wonder like if they're like, if they. were made later than some of the other ones. So if it had like changed like a from like Midwest out to the West Coast, I don't know. It just occurred to me. Hadn't really thought about it before. But they're not accessible. The one I've been into is just straight stairs. The town is like built into a hill. So it's just stairs into it. And it's not very big. But it's, I have no idea how they can get away with that. What was that library that put it that like redesign and then put it. stacks like up the stairs. Do you remember that?

Let's put a pin in that. Put a pin in that one. Twitter was very fun when that came out. There is a note in the notes to, we're going to revisit this. Excellent. So yeah, like basically a little bit of American architectural history, neoclassical and Victorian architecture were pretty dominant.

There's some tutor revivalism in the early 20th century. until the late 19th, early 20th century as well, when Franklin Wright ushered in a more popular boom of the prairie style. And, yeah, mid-century, in late 40s, early 50s, and then brutalism. And then, yeah, let's get to modern library design. And now we can come back to the modern upskirt hell, which was the Cornell Fine Arts Library.

Oh, we've got to read Cornell for Phil. Again and again and again. Again and again. Yeah, I remember when that article came out, I was just utterly aghast at how tone deaf it was. You know, like, how do you go through a whole school of architecture and end up thinking that this is a good idea? Have you never encountered a person?

who's worn a skirt before in your life? Not a lot of women are architects. Yeah. So my best friend was going to architecture school at Southern Illinois University. And the hours of it are really inflexible. And like to even get access to the studio was only a certain hour. So like if you have a fucking kid or something like she had to end up switching programs and she was like single and doesn't have children, but it was still like such inaccessible and inflexible. It destroys. times. Yeah. She's like, no, she had to switch and did like linguistics instead. My brother didn't sleep for five years and lost as was bald by 25. Like yeah. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. No. Also, the one of the background. Not. Bacquariate masters. Yeah. In the group chat, why I asked about like the connection

of like how much does this have to do with the McMansions. Yeah. Is that one of the things is they don't necessarily get architects is they get building companies. Yeah. They're just like, we want. want these features make us this. So I don't know how many like libraries, even if they do get architects or more like, we want these features and don't necessarily think of it as a cohesive thing. Is that that's very rare. Is that what's happening sometimes? Oh, okay. That's very rare because libraries are built with money from like taxpayers or like universities. This is what they're doing with your money kids. Yeah. So there's like accountability involved in like building a library that like you cannot just do that with.

Gotcha. Yeah. I was curious. Unless it's a little free library. Fuck you. Bumboe. Fucking cops. Yeah.

That was a fun week on Twitter, seeing that little free library bullshit get dunked on. It's like we've been telling y'all. Yeah. They're not good. They're not libraries. They're not buildings. Nope. So, yeah.

What else can we be mad about with library buildings? Or happy about? Well, I see you talk about the in the notes. You have the thing about the prison labor furniture. Sure do. If we want to get mad about that. But I also like, you're like, what do we think makes a good space? And I had some comments about that.

But I don't know if we want to get into the prison labor thing first. Let's talk about library furniture. Yeah. Because this gets into some other issues. And that's always the best part at fucking. the vendor hall is all the fun furniture too i've never been to one of those conferences so yeah i don't like vendor halls i hate being sold things and nobody has time for that shit just give me my lens clothes and let me get out of there i rate it for the pins and then i'm gone yeah i just i am a lens cloth

just fiend i want the lens cloths just let me have cleaners just let me have clean Lens. And make sure they're quality. You do have good glasses. So. Yeah. I got to keep these ginormous frames clean. These ginormous bottle lenses clean. They're enormous. I am. I'm a gauph bug. It's very good. It's adorable. I need these to see. I'm talking to you at my T-Press. You need to level up your lens cloth game. Your logo is too good to be wasted. on shitty product I'm telling you I am a big fan of your graphic design

you just need to get better swag okay Carrie's telling it like it is University of Chicago it was the Chicago manual style has great lens cloths so

good to know I do like the Chicago manual style yeah it's a good reference anyway So library furniture is something I also feel passionately about because I really fucking love furniture too. Surprise, surprise. So a lot of furniture is not very well made for several reasons. Number one, you got to make sure that your upholstery on your furniture has a good double rub rating.

And this is actually an official rating for a commercial grade of Street. Double rub? Yeah, it's a double rub. How many asses can your chair take? Yeah, exactly. It's like a porn term or something. Yeah, I love that.

How many asses can your fabric take? So look at your double rub rating. The more double rubs your fabric has, the more asses it can take. Number two, how timeless is the pattern? No pattern is timeless. Get a solid color. Dumbass. It's very graphic, very clean.

Very good. Number three. quality of labor. And this is where we get into it because a large portion of furniture, especially from university contracts, is required to come from prison labor. Yep. So, how do you find this out? You can actually look this up. So if you Google your university system or your particular university and look at furniture procurement or look for furniture contract or procurement contracts, you can actually find out

if your library is required to use prison laborer. So sometimes it'll be like required for certain departments, especially residence life. And that's typically where they're most required to do that is residence life. Other times they will require you to use certain vendors.

So if you are required to use certain companies, certain companies may use. prison labor and you can actually look into that by researching the companies and seeing what their labor policies are. Another way that you can investigate that is by even just going to your like vendor service if your university system or your university has like a vendor services page or you can even just ask people like what the procurement policies are. Like if your contract has to go out to bid over a certain amount like if it's over $5,000. Do you, have to go out to bid for furniture or something like that.

Because like, yeah, and that's that way you can just find those things out. So yeah, that's kind of how I've learned to do some of the research around prison labor, around library furniture. A lot of states require it for public universities. Virginia is a big one. Oregon's another one. Yeah. I was really disappointed to see Washington on your blog post about this.

Yeah. Jay's got the hands. So I'm going to call out my alma mom. who I actually love. A fucking college of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, uses prison labor like a fucking fiend for its furniture. And I don't think it was while I was there, but a few years after I graduated, a few students did a hunger strike to protest the prison labor.

And this was when the university had its first female president, by the way. They got rid of Taylor Revely, the third. And they got, you know, girl boss, gatekeep, gaslight president who was disciplining all of the students of color doing this, but not the white students. And then one of the students almost died doing the hunger strike so long. And this student had also been an international student and got deported because of it because the university forced them to do. a mental health leave, which violated their student visa. And so because these students were protesting the prison labor, one got deported. So fuck that noise.

Wow. That just kept getting worse. I didn't think that it could just go on. No, it was fucking bad. I'm so depressed now. Yeah, no. I actually really like William and Mary had a very good experience there. Bureaucracy at any university is bad, but I legitimately had a good time in my undergraduate

education, but fuck that noise. It was bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like there is shit like that that happened at my alma mater too. And I mean, yeah, I have a great time there too because I'm like a white person. So, right. Like my experience is obviously going to be fine no matter where I go.

So yeah, Virginia is very bad with using prison labor in its public state universities because William and Mary is public, actually. It's not a private school. Yeah. Thomas Jefferson went there. Yeah, we got to claim T.J. and fight with UVA about who gets to claim them. Anyway. Yay. Baby. So if you find out that you are required to use prison labor for furniture, Carrie, have you, do you have any, like, tips on how? how to organize against that, or is it, or is that too complicated to go into now? So the abolitionist library association, it has a prison divestment group that is working on a toolkit and a wiki that will hopefully be providing some tips that will provide tools and options

that can, you know, hopefully give some feedback advice for organizing in the workplace around that sort of thing. I personally don't know what you can do yet because these are pretty big systems and bureaucracy is a big scary thing. I am not a person who like has to make those decisions in my life anymore. So that's pretty cool. But I did have to do those things on a former job, which sucked. So now I'm just trying to work against it. And I'm just trying to work against it. I mean, like, there's just stuff that's going to be unavoidable to some extent because, like, Amazon Web Services is, like, in everything, like, all your lib guides are hosted on AWS. God, the AWS. I, oh.

If you want to do any sort of serverless, anything, or a lot of your system stuff is AWS. So much stuff is on it. It's ubiquitous. So it is really tough to avoid that stuff in the library world. So I mean, like there's kind of some stuff that with as much as you try to engage in BDS, not M. Well, why not both? Right. Boycott divest and sanctions actions activities that like and divesting from the prison industrial complex and libraries.

there can be major roadblocks, right? Try to do as much as you can, given the tools that we're putting together, I suppose. Harm reduction over. Exactly. Yeah, instead of trying to make. I'm a big harm reduction person. Yeah, exactly.

It's all about the organization component of it, I think, is what we're aiming for. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to move on to the next thing, unless you wanted to talk more about prison labor. No, I was going to say to cheer us up. Let's move on to what makes a good library space. Yeah.

I kind of end on an up note. Yeah. So, yeah, what makes a good library space? I can say from years of shelving, if your shelving's not flexible, you're fucked. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, honestly, like, your space in general, like, if you don't have outlets, if you don't have, like, if you don't have, like, if you don't have, if you don't have, yeah. You know, if you can build in twice as many Ethernet ports into your walls as you think you're going to need, you're going to be golden.

At least for a little while. Yeah. I was going to say, I put in mine, most of the notes I put in the thing where notes to myself. But one thing that my public library growing up did that I thought was really good is they had like, and I think like of especially for public libraries, I think this is something that makes it a good space. having a place where teenagers can go and have privacy without surveillance. Like there was like a teen room at the Bitten Public Library that had a door that closed. It was like a fucking like utility closet size thing, but that's where all the manga and graphics novels were.

There was a chair in there. You could hang out on all of like your AP like summer reading and stuff was in there. And like me and my friends would just go hang out in there even though it was small. and it had a door that closed. Whereas I've heard of so many libraries, we'll have a teen area, but it's all glass. And so people can look in or it's surveilled somehow because people don't trust teenagers. And so that was one of the things that stuck out to me of like a good public library space is like, especially for a community space, is having a place where teenagers can go and just not have cop shit done to them because they have cop shit done to them everywhere. Yeah, let's not replicate the surveillance of schools that's.

They already have to go through, right? Right. Yeah. So like those community space elements and like community trust elements because I feel there's a lot of distressed in libraries inherently. Like, oh, you're going to steal our shit even though we're lending it out to you. And that's just a part of lending things out. And also don't put your young adult areas next to your children's areas.

Like who thought that was a good idea? Like you're going to have teens swearing and doing stupid stuff on computers. and, you know, you know, doing teen things. And if you have it near the children's area, in my experience, because this was one of the libraries I worked at, you're just going to have parents bitching all day long. Yep. Speaking of children's areas, shout out to my former workplace that actually did a good thing. So the, you know, the Marriott Library at University of Utah did a thing because Utah, as you might suspect, has some interesting statistics about like graduation rates and when people. graduate and like how many parents there are obviously because Mormons. And one of the initiatives at the university did in order to help women graduate and like finish school because so many do become parents is that the library itself has like a whole section like where there's like a children's literature area. Now granted if you're like your institution

has like an education program, you should probably have that anyway. Yeah, we do. Yeah, but next to it, they had this whole little family section that had lactation rooms in it. It had a play area for the kids. So if you were a parent and you needed to study and do your work, you could go in there. You couldn't just drop your kids off there. But there were computers and stuff in there where you could work and then have your kids be in the area. You could go lactate or pump or whatever you needed to do.

There were kids books right fucking there that you could check out. So having that consideration for like the lifestyle. of your community and maybe some like every library should probably have something like that but the University of Utah that was a very unique need of theirs of just trying to help women graduate by being conscious that a lot of their students were parents so I thought that was a really good thing that that university and library did and you know don't paint your walls red maybe don't don't paint your you know don't put the black lodge in your library maybe like David Lynch warned us about this.

Yeah. Well, I like, I was thinking earlier about this question. And like you just said, Jay, like matching to your community, like, I live in a pretty art-se community. Yeah. And so we have like the community, we have like every three months. We have community artwork. So like local artists can have their art hung in the library for three months at a time.

And then like it's listed so you can like, you know, know where the artist is from and stuff. And, you know, that's just a really good program for here because we have so many artists. Right. You know, like matching, yeah, your space to your sort of community. Sounds like a no-brainer, but be surprised. Like, do shit like that instead of just being like, oh, we did it. We need a digital humanities lab. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we're working on a meditation space in our library. I love those. Or like prayer rooms and stuff. Yeah, it's going to be like an interfaith prayer meditation space. One thing that William and Mary's like Swim Library did was I think they put foot washing stations. Yeah. And their bathrooms or something for the Muslim students. Nice.

So yeah. Yeah, like that also like the bathrooms. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. No. No, we have inclusive restrooms.

Inclusive. That's a good word. Yeah. No, they don't say anything stupid on them. They just say inclusive restroom. Yeah. So the UNA. And like, we all know they're bad.

The Diamond Library bathrooms are awful. The students hate them. That library needs a renovation. And the HVAC needs to get replaced soon. So they're going to do a big renovation soon. But luckily, there are two, like right next to the reference desk. There are two single stall restrooms. And each of them also has a changing table in them.

And so those are sort of the de facto gender neutral restrooms in the library. And they're right by my office. Yeah. So they're great. And they're really nice and big and they have like a chair in them. Like if you have your kid with you or something or you need to set your backpack down. Jay and the kids today. I like, you know, I don't have children.

But like I know that like, you know, especially for like working in universities like non-traditional students. Right. Like people just don't assume that students have children. I'm just saying you're just all about the kids today. Oh, am I being, am I being a little sweet? Yeah, you're being you're being real little sweet. Real little sweet. I don't just care about kids, though.

Another thing I mentioned was at Salt Lake Public. I put in there that, like, they had little shops and stuff, like, in the Crescent area. So, like, if you go into Salt Lake Public, you're in this cool hallway thing. And, like, in one of the articles, that's the picture they showed you, was in the, like, entry way. And then you go and there's, like, these bitching, see-through glass elevators. And, like, that's where the stacks are. And then on the other side of the crescent are like, there's like a salon and a bookshop. And like like like little artists can set up there.

Okay. Who's like, who's like I got my haircoat at the library? But like it's like in the center of downtown Salt Lake City. And so like as a community center. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So there's like and Salt Lake also has a very large like houseless like unhoused population. It's one of the largest in the country.

I think like per capita or something. there was only one shelter there when I lived there, and they were wanting to get rid of it because all the people who lived in the area were like, eh, but we don't like it. And so Salt Lake has tried to do initiatives that help the unhoused people. So I'm imagining having little things like that within the library are part of that. Like I think at least with the county system, they all have Narcan training too. Nice. But yeah, so I liked that aspect of it of like, yes, this is a library, but it's also community space. And so there are these other little things that you can do while you're in here. Like, yeah, there's like, that's where like the library gift shop and stuff is and like the friends of the library sale stuff. But then there's like, oh, I need to get my haircut. There's a little salon right here.

Like it's Walmart. There's like a little plant shop. You know, there's the library cafe, that kind of cute little thing. So like while you're here, you can all kind of get it in one spot. I liked that kind of thing, like true community space. But so, yeah, I like the library a lot, you know, it's all glass and it's going to ruin all the books. Yeah. Is there anything that makes a library objectively good or objectively bad?

I mean, if it's inaccessible, it's objectively bad. I would say, does it have concrete? Yeah. Your library must have concrete. Concrete is a must. That makes your library objectively amazing. Lots of outlets. Lots of outlets.

Good HVAC. And actually, like, this just occurred to me. Think about your, like, your sightlines, not just your security sight lines, but like your Wi-Fi sightlines. If you're using a lot of concrete, think about where you're going to have to stick those Wi-Fi access points. Especially if you use cloud printing. Yeah. about that wop. Yeah, think about the wops.

I fucking love that that acronym. The first time I saw that in the song sense, I was seriously confused about what was happening. You're like, why is there a rap about wireless access points? I think around that time we were working, like we were working on purchasing a whole bunch. so I would go into work and just see all these proposals with WAP repeated on them. And I was just like, like, macaroni in the pot, baby.

Yeah. I'm a certified freak seven days a week. Oh. I love the radio edit where they have to edit out every single word of that entire song. Why do they even try? Why? Yeah. It's just like random post-verbal sounds.

And what is it wet and gushy Instead of wet ass pussy It's worse It's worse I had not heard that Wet and gushy Thanks for tuning in tonight And buildings

Shout out to brutalism Shout out to the brutal things in life