Minneapolis’s new central library, designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and opening in late 2006, will include an electronic light sculpture provisionally named Word Up by multimedia artist Ben Rubin. The project uses a matrix of LED tubes on the outer surfaces of each of two elevator cabs.
As the elevators move between floors, the LED displays will reveal, letter by letter, titles of books. Drawn from the library’s database, the ever-changing text may reflect the titles of books that have recently been checked out, reshelved, or searched in the online catalog. The system is being developed with David Small Design so that the elevator position sensors can communicate with the LED displays and tell them when to display the titles. In the context of the building’s glass atrium with elevated walkways, the climbing and descending book titles seem to evoke the idea that library patrons have become part of a giant reading machine: the LED signs will, says Rubin, “scan as if they were text hanging in the air.”
The project also emphasizes the more current model of a library as a node in a network of information flows.
Related: The Source, Making Visible the Invisible.
More about architecture as interface.
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