Housing Works Bookstore Cafe'

early bamboo studies

perspectival figure/ground exploration

analogue model

digital renderings

materials board

plan

sections

After in depth research into bamboo's life cycle/environment/state of being I began to derive spatial concepts from the plant to be applied to a redesign of the Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby St. The bookstore was to be designed in conjunction with Plyboo as a material supply partner, in a dual-branded output.

The space was an attempt to recreate the experience of bamboo's rapid re-growth, both horizontally (through its rhyzome and root system) and vertically (through its culms) on behalf of the user. Using the board as a building block, I created a series of models that emphasized this rapid movement in space.

I then began to think about the inherent dualities in the plant, the matrix of what is growing below ground in conjunction with what is growing above. This brought me to the realization of the inherent programmatic dualities in a book store cafe'. One program, the cafe' is an open environment for both eating and socializing with others, and the other - a bookstore intended for the very privatized act of reading. These two almost paradoxical entities are both independent and interdependent of one another. There is a very tentative oscillation between the two in one space.

In order to articulate these two behaviors each space is framed with bamboo as a construction material but in two very different ways in order for the experience of the space to dictate the use of it. The private reading space, is completely cladded in a soft bamboo fabric. The cafe' is an open air exposed framing, sans any cladding. The design utilizes a sloped, interconnected, circulatory system as a connection between cafe' and private reading space, just as rhyzomes connect clumps of bamboo culms in the plant's native environment. This slight sloped space is meant to emphasize a sort of postural growth within the user as he moves fluidly throughout the space. Furthermore, as the user moves into the private reading space, the flooring slightly slopes into the basement begins to reveal the inner workings of the bookstore's basement, which houses a  complex sorting and cataloguing system. The space becomes a dialogue between all of these elements and their correlation to one another.