Urban Room - Alessandro Gondolo

The library has always been an important part of my family; we have a strong passion in reading. The Urban Room was no new sight to me yet now I have the senses of an analytic observer. Normally, the Urban Room was simply a pathway to the library, a path connecting the world of bookcases and the outside world. We would pass through it with no care for the shops or the artwork. With the new intent of analyzing the room, I noticed many things I had never seen before, even though they have always been there.

When I first entered the Urban Room on the walkabout, I noticed the sheer size of the glass and metalwork; the room was surrounded by modernity. The floor was made of exotic colored bricks and the sky was suspended by glass. The room is long but, relatively, narrow in width; facing parallel, the room seemed enormous. The gradual curvature of the walls gives the impression that there is more space beyond the end of your vision. The ceiling also fell while curving, and the sixth floor ceased to exist at the middle and the fifth was flush with the ceiling at the end of the room. The short ledges had chairs and couches spaced evenly between the pillars. The room was an enclosed, public space that felt private and protected.

One side had the main attraction, the library. A typical large city library. The opposite side had stores. Not so typical. Each section had an a glass door popping out of the wall and in modern typefont, had various words lasered into the glass. The main store was the library store: used books and writing materials. When we entered, we were confronted by a sales representative. After asking us who what we were looking for, she began talking about the library and the urban room. She was a volunteer who had been with the library for 25 years. She was there when they planned and built the library. Lucky for us, she was eager to tell us about the great room and told us many details and curious anecdotes. Most disappointing was how the stores were not doing as well as they had predicted and could be closing down soon. Hopefully it is simply the normal consequences of a recession than the unfavorableness of the location. The whole store was as organized as the room itself. Order was (humanly) perfect.