The other day we noted plans to repurpose Denver’s unused train station into a hotel. Turns out it’s not the only former train station that’s finding new life:
The heyday of railway travel may have passed, but the nostalgic allure of architecturally striking infrastructure has ensured that it’s not the end of the line for many historic station buildings. We recently learned that Union Station in Denver, which opened to passengers in the late 19th century, will be transformed into a trendy hotel, with adjoining restaurants and a beer hall, by 2014. Click through our gallery to see how other train stations have been repurposed into thriving cultural centers, libraries, and more.
Train Station Library
Library attendance numbers in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands were dwindling. A public service organization decided to bring books to the people instead of waiting for people to come to the books. They created a public library in part of the Haarlem train station, providing a literary oasis for busy commuters.
The laudable trend toward free book-sharing setups has gotten plenty of attention, and here at Unconsumption we have highlighted many notable examples — some involving phone booths of all sorts; informal street versions; and of course the Little Free Libraries initiative.
But this particular book-share project happens to have an Unconsumption connection: It’s located in the community Metro Star Garden in Savannah, GA, where Unconsumption co-founder Rob Walker (that’s me) has some involvement.
In fact, if you happen to be in Savannah this Friday night April 5, the Metro Star Library makes its official debut in connection with the monthly Art March. Several of us from the garden will be around from 6-9 pm, showing off the garden and library and just generally hobnobbing with neighbors and Art Marchers. Perhaps there will even be refreshments? Only one way to find out for sure!
Anyway, the Metro Star Library was built at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Boundary Hall, and came about thanks in large part to the efforts and generosity of SCAD’s Scott Thorp and Todd Yuratich, as well as a number of students. Scott, a professor and the design program coordinator at SCAD, arranged for a bunch of students to sign on for an extra-credit series of workshops organized around building little libraries. Todd, an amazing woodworker who oversees the Boundary Hall shop space and also has his own practice, Miel Manufacturing (don’t miss his very cool “wooden paintings,” made completely from offcuts), led the workshops.
The blue/grey library was the one Todd built as a demo, and the second structure, which the garden is using as an “information” box (which we needed) was created by students Sydney Barnett, Taylor Olenik and Jamie Karaat, who I believe are all fashion majors.
Both structures were designed and constructed entirely from excess materials around the shop — pretty cool!
And they look even better in person. So Savannah folks should come by the garden Friday night!
More pictures of the garden itself (which is also a repurposing project of sorts — it used to be a vacant lot) here.
And of course, there’s much more elsewhere in the Unconsumption archives about swapping, sharing and the sharing economy / collaborative consumption, libraries, and books.
—rw
Metro Star Garden Library Debut: Friday Night April 5, 6-9 pm, corner of 38th & Howard, Savannah, GA.
A group of activists transformed an empty building in Oakland, California into a people’s library. Follow this linkto check out photos of the revitalized space.The organizers named it the “Victor Martinez People’s Library” in honor of the late Latino author. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Jaime Silva (one of the organizers) explained that the building had been abandoned for a few years and its darkness “sucks the life out of the community.”
…
Unfortunately, the people’s ability to enjoy the library was short-lived. The police have since evicted the library. …
(via Activists Build Library Inside Abandoned Building in Oakland - GalleyCat)
Honolulu public library books that have been taken out of circulation get folded into art by Wendy Kawabata.
Pictured: Part of Wendy’s Withdrawn from Circulation installation in New Zealand.
(Spotted on Poppytalk)
Note: Unconsumption caveat on using books as raw material. Also: Find some previous posts on new uses for old books here.
To add to our posts about libraries, other book-related matters, and wine-related repurposing, there’s this:
An obsolete card catalog repurposed as a minibar.
Need we say more?!
(photo via The Sugar Monster on Flickr)
We’re fans of free book exchanges, like the Little Free Libraries; the now-defunct-phone-booths-turned-mini-libraries (here, here, here, here, and here); shelves in London Tube and train stations and in airports that enable travelers to swap books; former newspaper racks; and a 1979 Ford transformed into a bookmobile from which free books are distributed in Buenos Aires, among others, that spring up in public spaces.
(We’re also fond of more traditional libraries that are housed in non-traditional settings like repurposed old buses and historic barns and churches.)
And now in Paris, there’s this communal book exchange sitting atop a tree cage:
Strasbourg-based street artist Florian Rivière is back with a new, neat urban intervention! Last weekend, Rivière installed a little library on a sidewalk near Gare du Nord … .
I don’t know if that’s a pallet or a crate (or both), but I like it!
See a couple of Riviere’s other urban interventions, a.k.a., “hacktions,” here.
(via Urban Hacktivist Launches Street Library — The Pop-Up City)
Artists transform vandalized library books into art
In 2001, librarians and staff at the San Francisco Public Library started finding damaged books, mainly related to gay, lesbian, and HIV/AIDS issues, shoved under shelves. The vandal was caught and ultimately charged with a hate crime.
“Rather than discard the damaged books, the Library distributed them to interested community members in the hope of creating art.” The artistic responses comprise “Reversing Vandalism,” an exhibition of more than 200 works of art.
Images, via Reversing Vandalism: Online Gallery :: San Francisco Public Library: Altered book pieces by Mary Bennett (top) and Gretchen Schermerhorn and Eric Bu.
In case you missed them: Unconsumption’s collection of library-related posts can be found here; books here.
When the University of Iowa Libraries retired its decades-old physical card catalog in 2004, librarians and library staff hoped to “find as many creative uses as possible for the salvaged card catalog cards and generate a sense of community among those who love the card catalog.” They offered cards to artists and students, among other people, who responded by crafting the 3” x 5” cards into works of art.
Pictured, from the cARTalog digital collection: Matt Pollard’s flip book, Gregory Galloway’s collage, and Sandy Brandes’s illustrated piece.
More: cARTalog - Iowa Digital Library
Other libraries, such as University of South Carolina’s, have commemorated their beloved, yet obsolete card catalogs in creative ways.
See also:
Books from a “defunct U.S. Navy base library” form Colombian artist Miler Lagos’s impressive, self-supporting igloo-like sculpture. (via A Dome of Books | Colossal)
See also: Earlier Unconsumption book-related posts here.
P.S. Remember it’s National Library Week!
![Continuing our celebration of National Library Week:
Jackson [New Hampshire] Public Library partnered with the local historical society to re-erect the Trickey Barn, which dates to the 1850s but was dismantled in 2008, for use as the new library building. It replaces an 800-square-foot facility that lacked plumbing. The new structure offers Wi-Fi, plenty of seating, and is accessible to people with disabilities.
Architect: Denis Mires, P.A. The Architects
(via American Libraries Magazine)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2765i0vaE1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
Continuing our celebration of National Library Week:
Jackson [New Hampshire] Public Library partnered with the local historical society to re-erect the Trickey Barn, which dates to the 1850s but was dismantled in 2008, for use as the new library building. It replaces an 800-square-foot facility that lacked plumbing. The new structure offers Wi-Fi, plenty of seating, and is accessible to people with disabilities.
Architect: Denis Mires, P.A. The Architects
Happy National Library Week — the annual celebration, led by the American Library Association, of all things library! This week, in honor of Library Week, we’ll feature a series of library- and book-related posts.
Today, the Unconsumption spotlight is on Little Free Libraries: community book exchanges — located in places like your neighbor’s front yard, and on college campuses and in hospitals — where library cards aren’t needed. The libraries’ basic concept is: “Take a book. Leave a book.”
Most of the “libraries,” which hold 20-30 donated books, are made from reclaimed materials. Each library, which has an official caretaker who builds and maintains it, is registered by the Little Free Library (LFL) project, with its location noted on the LFL Web site. So far, more than 200 little libraries have opened in 34 states and 17 countries.
The libraries not only provide a way for people to pass along books they no longer want, they also help foster a sense of community. In this NPR story on the Little Free Library project, a library user says: “there are all of these nice, little serendipitous connections that happen with your neighbors.” A library caretaker mentioned meeting, via her free library, neighbors who live a block away — neighbors she hadn’t met previously.
Through the non-profit project, LFL co-founders Todd Bol and Rick Brooks aim to promote literacy and love of reading; they also hope that more people (you, perhaps?) will contact them about opening free little libraries in their own communities!
See also:
- Earlier Unconsumption posts on various community-driven book swaps, including several operating out of old phone booths, plus other swapping-related projects and services here.
- More on sharing and the sharing economy / collaborative consumption, libraries, and books.
Phone booths re-purposed as micro-libraries in New York City. (via Designboom)
I love urban interventions, especially when books are involved. (Check out this newspaper stand converted into a community lending library, if you haven’t already seen it.)
Anyway, this NYC phone-booth-turned-book-swap is a great addition to the group of repurposed phone booths featured previously on Unconsumption (here), which includes other micro-libraries in various cities.
Are there other repurposed phone booths that we — your friendly Unconsumption hosts — haven’t yet come across?
(via wnyc)
