Jesuit Libray
Columbia Heights is a typical neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Using its predominant building type - the rowhouse - and the Jesuit order’s intellectual approach to spirituality, an architecture emerges. The components:
The tektons, opaque skin pieces that reconcile the street edges and maintain the rowhouse dimensions. The service block which continues the existing block poché, taking the form of another rowhouse.
The field, an infinite expanse of knowledge. The library taps into this dimension and makes it physical.
The chapel, where the spiritual sets itself apart as an object within the field of knowledge.
Early Process Models
By modifying the field it becomes a book stack, a stair case, a column, a beam, a shear wall or a truss. Subtracting from the field differentiates spaces as at the chapel, circulation desks, tektons, and service block.
The bottom layer of field is subtracted, and the main reading room is pushed down one story into the ground. The stacks are suspended from trusses that span the length of the site; as a result, the main reading room is a single column-free space.
With Santiago Vales