Access and Its Limits

An Architecture of Openness: Letting the Outside In

Human movements are not linear like the way a train travels, but curve in a more organic way. With straight lines we can only create a crossroads, but with curves we can create more diverse interactions. Architectural forms can be created from human movements and, in turn, architecture influences humans. I think it’s ideal when they create a dynamic interaction. (Nishizawa, SANAA, 2010)

On February 22, 2010, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) introduced the newest addition to its campus facilities, The Rolex Learning Center. The institution, now open to the EPFL community as well as to the general public, was conceived of by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, both partners at SANAA Architects. Through their design, Sejima and Nishizawa introduced a new architectural approach to education and learning. Rather than understanding the acquisition of knowledge in a linear sense, they preferred to treat it as a landscape in which different people, disciplines, and technologies come together in a spontaneous and free way. The Rolex Learning Center is “barrier-free,” instead of walls it has incorporated slopes, plateaus, and valleys into its design in order to allow visitors to move through and use the space as they see fit. However, more than simply providing flexible and spontaneous mobility to the Center’s users, the institution’s unique design and architecture also mimics the exterior landscape of the Swiss alpine and lake region in which it finds itself. It creates a seamless relationship between the inside and the outside that suggests learning is not done in isolation, but shares a sensibility with the environment in which it takes place. The Rolex Learning Center literally lets the outside in.

Although primarily a library, with one of the largest scientific collections (500,000 printed works) in Europe, The Rolex Learning Center is also a “laboratory for learning,” and equally functions as an “international cultural hub” (EPFL, 2010, p. 2). What is noteworthy about the Centre is that although it blends all the elements of modern library design, it is not called a “library,” providing a vast range of services and space—from the library and study areas to cafés and restaurants. This is significant, as it suggests the current discourse that holds that libraries are no longer “just libraries,” but a hybrid of different specializations and services that have come together to create a new public space.

An iteration of just such a new public space is present in Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque, which opened in the spring of 2005. The winning design of the Grande Bibliothèque library project was awarded to John and Patricia Patkau of Patkau Architects from Vancouver and their Québécois partnering firms Croft Pelletier and Gilles Guité (Figure 1). ¹ The architects’ hopes for the new library were similar to those put forth by Sejima and Nishizawa: They wanted Montreal’s new central public library to convey an atmosphere of openness. When considering the architectural properties of modern libraries, access physically manifests itself through a building’s openness, or porousness to its surrounding environment, as well as internally through various circulation strategies, such as those laid out by SANAA. In The Architecture of Knowledge: The Library of the Future (2010), Huib Haye van der Werf writes that

the contemporary public library no longer merely houses and catalogues books and records. It also provides public access to the Internet, computer workstations, recreation facilities such as a cafe/restaurant, exhibition spaces, educational programs and in some cases even day-care facilities. In many ways, the library has become an appendage of the public space [sic]. An institute that houses multi-faceted and varied programs under the same roof [ . . . ] Outside the walls of the public library – in an increasingly marked and marketed public domain—the same amenities are available, but the library seems to have chosen the strategy to become a concentrate of this public space, letting the outside within its walls. (pp. 16-17)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Patkau Architects, Grande Bibliothèque Model, 2000, photograph.

The Patkaus’ proposal for the Grande Bibliothèque was precisely a variation on the idea of constructing a building that would “let the outside within its walls.” A primary goal was to make it so that the Grande Bibliothèque not only reflected its urban surroundings but also created a seamless connection between the interior space of the library and the exterior space of the city streets. The Patkaus wanted this to physically manifest itself through what they called “collapsed spaces, whereby the project’s and the site’s different component parts are closely interrelated,” as well as through “mutual appropriation” (Patkau/Croft Pelletier/Gilles Guité, 2000, p. 4), where the library appropriates the city in which it finds itself, and in turn that city and its public appropriate the library:

Our proposal is that the different constituents of the public spaces of the city and the library be collapsed or compressed together, so that they can dialogue and interact by mutually enlivening and supporting each other. In this way, the components specific to each one are superimposed, juxtaposed at the core of an attenuated ensemble where lines of separation are virtually nonexistent. (p. 4)

The four floors that make up the Grande Bibliothèque, therefore, correspond, in one way or another, to the activities taking place within the city. For instance, within the initial design drawings, the library café, the retail store, exhibition spaces, the 24-hour section, an auditorium, meeting rooms, the newspaper and magazine area, are all located at the metro and street levels of the library. These spaces correspond to activities that might similarly be taking place at street level, and all of them, although some have been modified, are in their envisaged locations within the library today (Figure 2). Furthermore, the interior space is always invariably linked to the outside, as are the different interior spaces and activities linked to each other. Things in the library space communicate visually: you can see and be seen. The point of such collapsed spaces was as much to create a seamless encounter between the library and the city as it was to encourage accidental and spontaneous interactions within the building itself, as well as between the library and the street:

The manifold programs of the city, of the street, of Savoie Ave. and the elements of the library’s program are integrated in thought-provoking visual combinations. They can thus be experienced accidentally by passers-by, by regulars, by audiences for special events, and by strollers in quest of a cup of coffee. Accidental engagement is favoured by means of visual prolongation and the unexpected continuity of spatial and functional experiences. (p. 4)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Patkau Architects, Grande Bibliothèque Street Level Floor Plan, 2000, photograph.

Creating a space for spontaneous and accidental public encounters seems to be a recurring trend in modern library design. It can be observed within the Rolex Learning Center, but also in libraries such as the Seattle Public Library, as well as the Vancouver Public Library. These institutions are demonstrative of an architectural form that seeks to bring the outside in, what is otherwise understood as “urban consolidation,” where “[i]nfrastructural elements typical of the city, such as streets, squares, and buildings are reinterpreted as spatial components of the library, thus suggesting a continuation of the public realm” (Project, 2010, p. 62). This is a somewhat paradoxical way of conceiving the new library. This particular architectural style seeks to renegotiate and juxtapose the restrictive, closed, and controlled nature of the traditional library, and at the same time create a new public space. However, new public spaces often come about unpredictably, they can form around a park bench, a snack bar, an empty parking lot, or an alleyway. New library design is attempting to build unpredictability and the “encounter” into the space of the library so that it may become a new public realm that people engage with, and where new forms of publicness can be displayed. Yet the library is still an institution, and institutions are by default predictable spaces, meaning that the unpredictability being built into them is somewhat lost, or, at the very least, managed into nonspontaneity. As Daniel Van Der Velden (2010) writes, “publicness is not a given. It depends on how, when and why people choose to congregate in public” (p. 26).

Patricia Patkau argues that part of the reason that the Grande Bibliothèque has had so much success as a very particular attempt at creating a new type of public space is because architecturally it has managed to somewhat overcome the institutional control that comes with the territory of the controlled library space:

Many large libraries actually kill urban space around them because of this issue of a single point of control (with the rest of the perimeter being quite dead). So the lecture/theatre, gallery, meeting rooms, meeting spaces, mini-conference rooms, gift shop, bouqinists, etc are all directly connected to the street/lane/subway system/city and the library control point is pushed back as deep into the building as possible. Spaces outside of control can operate outside of normal library hours. (P. Patkau, interview, November 22, 2011)

Some scholars such as Bart Verschaffel (2009), criticize the new trend of incorporating other public spaces, such as retail stores and cafés, into cultural and educational institutions. He argues that institutions such as the library, the museum, the school are semipublic spaces that “are separated spaces” (2009, p. 142) and should remain as such. For Verschaffel, letting the street in, or the outside in, means turning semipublic spaces into spaces of consumption, just as the street, which he argues was once a public space of encounter and dialogue, a political space, has been transformed into a politically irrelevant space of “spectacle and voyeurism [ . . . ] where one is free to move and to look, to choose and to buy” (p. 141) but no longer to speak. He writes,

Semi-public spaces are essentially theatrical. This implies that they are spaces with a threshold. They are conditionally accessible [ . . . ] Certain groups have easy access while others are barred. But a threshold is more than an obstacle. It also marks a transition from the street to a conditioned space: one may enter the theater or the museum on condition that one plays the game and takes part in what goes on inside. (Verschaffel, 2009, p. 142)

One should therefore be entering the library with the knowledge of the conditions that it imposes. For Verschaffel, this is crucial, because if libraries all of a sudden become a hybrid of meanings, if they blend their ideologies with those of the street, they risk losing their autonomy as well as their relevance as the institution that they are proposing to be. For Verschaffel (2009), the argument is not that a library be inaccessible or restrictive, only that those who access it understand the rules that they are required to play by in order for the library to remain a library. For him, “[t]he existence of conditional public spaces and of institutional spaces is a precondition for criticism” (p. 144), and architecture is what defines them as such. Nevertheless, the winning project in Québec’s very first international architectural competition, designed by Patkau Architects, Croft-Pelletier, and Gilles Guité, was one that, through collapsed spaces and mutual appropriation, let the outside in.

Having become one of the most visited libraries in North America, the Grande Bibliothèque has indeed been quite successful. In 2011, it had over 2.7 million visitors (BAnQ, the Grande Bibliothèque is head of the class!). In fact, the Grande Bibliothèque has been somewhat a victim of its own success. After only a week of being open it had already seen 63,000 visitors, and currently boasts an average of 50,000 visitors per week. It was initially meant to be open 24 hours. The main floor of the lending library, where the checkout and reference desks are located, was actually designed so that a section of the library could be closed off by sliding doors from the rest of the library in order to remain open throughout the night. However, the large number of users, and the budget capabilities of the library did not coincide, and keeping the library open all night would have meant much higher operational costs. Nevertheless, the Grande Bibliothèque’s success cannot be denied, and the reasons for it are numerous. They range from the architectural sophistication of the building, to the services offered within, to the fact that Montreal was very much in need of a new “free” public space, and an interior one at that, given the city’s long and usually harsh winters. Although it often is, success in terms of number of visitors should not be understood as the contemporary library’s exclusive goal. As will be seen in the following sections, there are many competing discourses at play within the modern library that are important to bring to light because they further our understanding of what the library is, and will be, as an integral institution for emergent forms of societal public culture. Yet the language of success and relevance, seemingly so crucial to the library’s continued existence by following the logic of taxpayers voting with their feet and being present in numbers, often overshadows these same discourses.

Library Transformations

There is a distinction to be made between notions of what qualifies as the “traditional” library and the “modern.” Conceptions of the library as a modern institution, that is a building that houses a collection of books, allows access to that collection, and offers a distinct area for consultation, were born with the Renaissance, and date as far back as 1450 with one of the earliest examples being the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Casena, and later the Laurentian Library in Florence (the Biblioteca Laurenziana, designed by Michelangelo). Of course the Ptolemy Library in Alexandria could be considered an even earlier example of what is understood as “modern” with regard to the library; however, what is significant about early “modern” libraries is the emphasis that they placed on books and reading. The aforementioned examples marked the library as distinct from the museum, as they were no longer spaces that only housed and preserved collections, but stressed the importance of the relationship between the collections, the knowledge they contained, and their readers. The connection between books and their readers therefore drove the earliest forms of library architecture. The correlation between books and reading evolved over time, as books became less a “treasure” to be preserved and protected, “and more an object of use” (Edwards, 2009, p. 4), and the architectural priorities of libraries shifted accordingly. As Brian Edwards (2009) explains, “[o]ver the past two centuries, the balance of power has shifted from the book to the reader and more recently from the book to digital data systems” (p. 7). The very first reading rooms were domed spaces around which books lined the circular walls. The reading room, both its symbolic value and real presence, became even more prominent in the 20th century, when libraries were becoming more democratic spaces that encouraged not only study and reading but also a communicative exchange between users and library staff, and among users themselves. Libraries moved away from the 19th century architectural combination of dome and cube, reminiscent of museum architecture, to the container/square model still seen today (Figure 3). Reading rooms turned into foyer-like spaces and books were stored in galleries removed from the library’s more public areas. The contemporary library is currently a vast reading room that accommodates all forms of reading practices. The evolution of the book in favor of the reader has not only driven library architectural priorities but has also given architecture a privileged place in the transformation of the meaning and identity of the library. Edwards (2009) argues that

The shifting politics of power in the library has been to the advantage of architectural space. As the importance of the reader has grown under the influences of falling book prices, and the ever-lowering cost of information technology, so there has been a growing recognition of the value of space as the medium of interchange. (p. 7)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Patkau Architects, Grande Bibliothèque Exterior, 2005, photograph.

This is certainly true of contemporary library design. Vast, fluid spaces with high ceilings and large windows that take in the surrounding environment, and allow for natural light to filter into what was once a muted interior, create the desired effect for space itself to take on the role of being “the medium of interchange.” Yet the library was indeed once a space that looked “inwards not outwards,” one that was not a place from which “to view the city but one where the intellectual realm of society [was] captured within its walls” (Edwards, 2009, p. 9). However, at present, the library has been transformed into a space wherein the outside, the presence of the street, has become central to its contemporary needs. This can be seen through examples such as the Peckham Public Library (2000) designed by Will Alsop, the Vancouver (1995) and Seattle (2004) public libraries designed by Moshe Safdie and Rem Koolhaas, respectively, as well as the Brighton Public Library (2005) by Bennetts Associates. This is the context within which the Grande Bibliothèque project can be situated and understood as a library that has not only adapted its role to the needs of the contemporary sociopolitical and technological environment, but has also made architecture the central actor in its transformation.

The Complexities of Access

While “openness” was one of the primary goals for the Grande Bibliothèque design, this was not necessarily an innovative and genuinely forward-looking stipulation on the part of the Grande Bibliothèque committee and the architects. Openness in contemporary library culture and design has become a standard conceptual language through which the library can present itself as a supposedly more accessible institution. Even as the library remains a dominant provider and arbiter of certain forms and practices of access to knowledge reserved for a very particular population of users, access has become the operative ideology of the modern library. Through its deployment, it has become a term that has simultaneously come to mean everything and nothing at all. Access has come to define the contemporary library, and has become a given in terms of what libraries are and what they have to offer. Libraries and access have nearly become synonymous, and yet access as it relates to the library is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Historically, libraries were not institutions that were built upon ideological assumptions of access. The very first libraries were built to archive the earliest forms of writing: They were meant to preserve the clay tablets of the pre-Christian era. As forms of writing progressed from papryrus rolls and parchment leaves, through to manuscripts and books, so too did the role of the library. Libraries have always provided access to the materials they hold but, for most of their history, this access was formally restricted. It is only of late that “universal” access has come to be associated with libraries per se. Libraries were primarily similar to universities as places of scholarship; they were institutionalized seekers, producers, preservers, and cataloguers of a managed “truth.” They were not necessarily meant to be disseminators of that truth. van der Werf (2010) writes that the library was an “exclusive setting for [the] task of power and enlightenment” (p. 17), and this task was exclusively reserved for societal elites. Access became more directly associated with libraries in the late 19th century when the library became an institution supported by taxation, but, even then, marginalized social classes, such as ethnic minorities, women, and children, were still excluded (van der Werf, 2010, p. 12). In fact, even with the birth of the Carnegie library model in North America, which arguably democratized the library, access was still a murky term. Abigail Van Slyck (1995) challenges often uncontroversial readings of American libraries as the first real democratic institutions that embodied “a golden age of American unity” (p. xix). In addition to a thorough study of the buildings themselves that often masked (and perhaps still do) a more complex history, Van Slyck highlights how a form of cultural citizenship still highly dependent on unequal power relations was written into the very design of Carnegie buildings themselves, and how this would have a major impact on both women and children, the newest members of Carnegie’s “free” institution.

It is not surprising that access would be a founding priority for an institution that would eventually be responsible for the documentary holdings of both the Bibliothèque Centrale de Montréal and the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, not to mention a wide variety of digital collections. The idea of accessibility of site, although in building design often primarily understood as ease of entry to the building for things and people, is especially interesting to flesh out as notions of access have become so pervasive in how we currently speak about libraries and their democratic character. It is also relevant to the ways in which we have come to speak about emerging media technologies and, in both cases, access has very clearly come to mean making things available. Yet the presumption of access often obscures lingering problems of inaccessibility to various things/spaces for particular classes of people. Martin Hand (2008) argues that ideas of access have become the “dominant narrative” (p. 75) of the digital age. He writes that access can first “refer to a democratization or a ‘flattening’ of culture, of new cultural spaces and forms which are inherently more accessible than ever before because of the place-defying structure of digital communication technology,” but it can also refer “to new disconnections alongside connections, to new territories and zones, and to divides between them which need to be ‘bridged’” (Martin Hand, 2008, p. 75). In other words, libraries within this context can be seen as having become increasingly accessible not only as physical sites but also through the expanded amounts of information that can be accessed within them thanks to the affordances of emergent media technologies. However, this so-called “democratization” of spaces and information alike has also created new dividing barriers and perhaps even reinforced old ones. In their study of the Seattle Public Library, Fisher, Saxton, Edwards, and Mai (2007) found that although access to raw information may have been improved and facilitated, access to actual people and bodies was not as obvious. In their survey of over 150 patrons, many admitted that they were often unsure of who the librarian was. Fisher et al. (2007) write that

[g]eneral confusion over who exactly a librarian is from amongst all a library’s staff [ . . . ] still exists in the minds of at least some users [ . . . ] On the one hand, this suggests that the public is savvy; they know that the person behind the circulation desk or providing security is not a librarian; on the other hand, it further suggests that perhaps librarians have become invisible, that the few who haven’t been replaced by technicians or paraprofessionals are mainly behind the scenes, and that a lack of name badges or other prominent signage is keeping them from being easily identified. Whatever the reasons, the public—at least those of the SPL—admire their librarians, know their worth, and want to see and interact with more of them. (p. 148)

The invisibility of the librarian is not unique to the Seattle Public Library and may be the result of a few more factors. From my own experiences at the Grande Bibliothèque, I also found that the librarian has become invisible, or rather as Fisher et al. argue, perhaps his or her role has been delegated to more “behind the scenes” kind of work, rather than hands on, face-to-face communication with patrons. Technology, although it has perhaps enhanced our levels of access to raw data, has also made the body disappear. The contemporary librarian, rather than having been replaced by technicians or paraprofessionals, has become the technician, the archivist, the community organizer, and the activist, on top of the role that she or he holds as librarian. The duties of the contemporary librarian have expanded, they encompass numerous professions, and if librarians are not necessarily overworked (although this is very likely the case), their duties require them to possibly be elsewhere, or invisible, a problem that has apparently been solved by the promises of technology with the expanding services offered by the virtual librarian. The contemporary phenomenon of the disappearing body of the librarian is especially relevant in the context of surveillance. In early 20th-century libraries the physical presence of the librarian and her gaze were essential to monitoring patron behavior. The open circulation desk where the librarian sat was often positioned centrally, in a way that allowed for the librarian to have an unobstructed view of her surroundings. With highly sophisticated surveillance technologies (often invisible to the naked eye) having replaced the librarian’s watchful gaze, new public libraries such as the Grande Bibliothèque can at the very least maintain the illusion of being surveillance-free, and as such, much more open, accommodating, and unrestrictive spaces. Interestingly, at the Grande Bibliothèque, although not immediately apparent, the chief librarian’s office offers a bird’s-eye view of the entire library, recalling the centrally positioned open circulation desk of early 20th-century library design.

With regard to the physical properties of the library space itself, the idea of access displays similar contradictions. Van Slyck (2007) argues that

A building’s exterior forms set the tone for an individual’s encounter with the institution: gates, steps, doors, suggest the library’s approachability (or lack thereof), its scale inspires awe (or not), and its formal vocabulary signals a kinship with other institutions of a similar style. A building’s plan determines which interactions—with books, with library staff, with other users—are possible and which are impossible. The three-dimensional qualities of a building’s interior spaces, as well as the furnishings and fittings in those spaces, constitute a sort of stage set that encourages users to play certain sanctioned roles, while making others seem unthinkable. (p. 222)

These various configurations that Van Slyck addresses, which usually go unnoticed, exist within the Grande Bibliothèque. A very concrete example would be the multiple circulation paths that exist within the library, and that may or may not be appealing to different kinds of users. The meandering path that envelops the central staircase in the Grande Bibliothèque might appeal to the library flâneur, whereas the stairs or the elevator may appeal to the patron who is seeking to find what she or he is looking for as quickly and efficiently as possible (Figure 4). This particular example is quite adaptive to a patron’s preferences, and although on some level it conditions the ways in which people move within the space of the library, it can be recognized as not intending to be restrictive in any sort of way. However, as will become apparent in the next section, certain library properties are in fact preemptive features of the building, and have been put into place precisely to prevent certain actions or situations from taking place within the space, with these same features often calling the library’s democratic assumptions about access into question.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Patkau Architects, Grande Bibliothèque Interior, 2005, photograph.

Surveillance, Monitoring, and Questions of Privacy

The Grande Bibliothèque’s square-like formation (perhaps more rectangular when looking at the finished building) was not an arbitrary decision. Not only could the square be made into a spacious, comfortable, and pleasurable space, but it could also distribute noise in such a way that created quiet spaces where those areas were desired, and noisy ones in order to appeal to the younger demographic. The square, however, was also considered to be the most practical and amenable to managing the ease of flow between people and the collections. In establishing the configuration of the site, the library in the shape of a square was to be privileged as it could offer the largest surface area for the smallest perimeter of wall to be constructed, and simultaneously assured a more efficient distribution of technical and mechanical systems throughout the building.

Still, the square was practical for perhaps an even more important and pressing reason. The library within the form of a square would also provide for more compact forms of spacing within the building itself, which, according to the Grande Bibliothèque committee, would make for spaces that could be more easily monitored by staff. This would in turn translate into budgetary savings, for in this scenario fewer employees would be required to monitor patrons as technical security systems could do the job even more efficiently. In our digital age, surveillance has become an arguably necessary and also inevitable part of our lives, particularly in urban centers. As David Lyon (2002) writes,

[s]urveillance is an increasingly significant mode of governance in so-called knowledge-based or information societies. [ . . . ] Daily routines are now subject to myriad forms of checking, watching, recording and analyzing, so much so that we often take for granted the fact that we leave trails wherever we are and whatever we do. (p. 242)

Surveillance, monitoring and the implications that these might have on our privacy take on a particularly complicated importance with regard to the public library.

The public library is a place that is open to “anyone who strolls in” (Boyer, 2008, pp. 7-8), and although this is in fact one of the characteristics that defines the public library as a democratic public space, it simultaneously engages the need for surveillance, as “anyone who strolls in” could also be the unsolicited or possibly undesired, high risk passerby, whose actions may deviate from those normally expected within the space of the library. Here again, notions of access are called into question, as “true” access in this case is only granted to those who fit within a specific, acceptable “low-risk” norm or category. A concrete example of this is played out within the Grande Bibliothèque restrooms. Although cameras may be a violation of privacy within the Grande Bibliothèque restrooms, ultraviolet lighting to prevent heroin addicts from shooting up, ² and occasional monitoring by security staff to make sure the homeless are not planning to spend the night, are not seen as problematic. In fact, this type of monitoring is meant to protect patrons, and also enhance privacy rather than infringe upon it.

Another instance of this type of risk management presented itself in a slight modification of the interior design after the library had opened to the public. Originally, if you looked up at the vast wooden room that houses the Grande Bibliothèque’s universal collection and serves as the public lending library, you would notice that slats or empty spaces had been designed into the wooden paneling as a way of allowing natural light to be filtered into the space. Not long after the library opened, these spaces were filled in with glass panels to prevent people from throwing books over the guardrails to the main floor where they could then potentially make off with a book without having checked it out. This glass modification, and similar small changes in detail, came as “after thoughts” to various scenarios not previously anticipated, and also to respond to the fact that not everyone was comfortable with the library’s spatial configurations. Openness was not for everyone, and neither was it always practical. Access here is again called into question, for in this instance it relies very much on issues of trust and perception. If a so-called possible “high-risk” patron or user might have initial access to the library and all that it has to offer, but cannot be trusted to behave accordingly within the institutional framework in which they find themselves, they would in turn belong to the category of those who should have access but ultimately do not.

As was argued earlier by Verschaffel, and in light of some of the previous examples, although the library may be promoting an idea of ultimate freedom in the ways in which one behaves within its space—in theory patrons can talk above a whisper, they can choose their own paths, they can sit at a desk, or lounge on a couch, they can have a coffee or eat a sandwich (albeit in a designated area), all actions that would have been unthinkable in the traditional library—in reality, the library still imposes its own set of conditions and rules of behavior.

The problem of the “high-risk” user equally implicates all library users, as monitoring devices and risk management initiatives restrict and control everyone within the space of the library, meaning that the so-called spontaneity, openness, and unlimited freedom that has been built into the space of the library by way of collapsed spaces and meandering pathways are ultimately lost, not only because the library imposes its own set of rules and conditions that regulate behavior but also due to surveillance. As Verschaffel (2009) writes, “[b]eing free to move without anyone interfering, while nonetheless continuously being tracked or watched, is no longer intuitively perceived or experienced as freedom” (p. 139).

Conclusion: Mediating Public Space

The entire design process—from the moment a city decides it needs a new library building to the selection of the architect, from the creation of blueprints through the building’s construction—depends in great part on the objectives of the design project. In other words, what do the local library and the city hope to accomplish by building a new downtown library building? (Mattern, 2007, p. 9)

In the case of Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque, the new downtown library was to be a space that promoted openness, access, spontaneity, publicness and freedom. Yet the events of February 29, 2012, emphasize the contradictory nature of wanting to build openness and the possibility of unpredictable, spontaneous encounters into the library’s architectural fabric. Letting the outside in is a nice idea in theory, but in actuality the kind of spontaneous displays of publicness acceptable within the space of the library are limited. In closing its doors to avoid the demonstration, the Grande Bibliothèque made it clear that at the library one could engage in a discussion of protest movements in Québec, but it would not become the site of such protest or struggle. Not everything that happens on the street is welcome in the library’s surveilled sanctuary.

Perhaps we are asking too much of the contemporary public library. Perhaps the library, as Verschaffel argues, should remain a separate space, one that is semipublic. A space that offers the possibilities and conditions of openness and access but only if certain rules are adhered to. Despite its initial resistance to notions of control, the Grande Bibliothèque’s architecture (if inadvertently) points to the fact that regulating patron behavior still remains integral to the library’s purpose. This does not necessarily need to be understood as something that is restrictive or ultimately undemocratic. On the contrary, in pointing out the inconsistencies of the definitions of openness and access within libraries worldwide, we might be better positioned to understand what has brought on such inconsistencies and how to overcome them. The current presumption of access has obscured real problems of inaccessibility for a spectrum of citizens that are an integral part of a library’s purported public culture. Access has become an operative ideology for libraries that has simply provoked a greater desire for surveillance and control.