BIND: Reimagining Library Architecture Through Community Knowledge

BIND, a project by Anthony Yue, Ben Preston, and Jason Saccoliti, is a shortlisted entry of the BookMark 2020 competition. The proposal challenges conventional library architecture by beginning with a provocative condition: the library is intentionally left blank.

Rather than opening with a predetermined collection chosen by an institution, the project allows its books, identity, and cultural relevance to develop gradually through the participation of the surrounding community. Visitors become authors, publishers, readers, curators, and contributors. Through on-site print-on-demand services, the library evolves into a physical record of local interests, experiences, images, stories, and ideas.

BIND therefore presents the library not as a static container of information, but as an expanding civic system shaped by the people who use it.

An Intentionally Empty Library

The central idea behind BIND is defined by absence. At the beginning, there are no books on the shelves. This blankness is not a failure of the institution, but the foundation of its architectural and social model.

The collection is built over time by community members. A visitor may contribute a self-published novel, an amateur photography monograph, a research booklet, a family archive, or a locally produced work of fiction. Other books may be selected from existing catalogues and printed when requested.

This strategy questions the traditional relationship between a library and its users. In a conventional system, readers receive access to a collection assembled by librarians, institutions, publishers, and established cultural authorities. In BIND, that relationship becomes more open and reciprocal.

The community does not simply consume knowledge. It produces and organises it.

Each contribution adds another layer to the library’s identity. As the shelves gradually fill, the building becomes an evolving portrait of the community it serves.

Community as Creator, Curator, and Consumer

BIND is built around the idea that every visitor can participate in the formation of the collection. The distinctions between author, reader, librarian, and publisher become less rigid.

A person may visit to search for a particular book, but they may also contribute an original publication. Another visitor might discover that work, read it, and later connect with the person who created it. The physical network of books begins to operate as a slow, spatial form of social media.

Unlike digital platforms, where content moves quickly through constantly updating feeds, the collection at BIND develops through physical presence and deliberate interaction. Books remain visible on shelves, allowing personal contributions to occupy a permanent place within the shared environment.

This creates opportunities for conversation and recognition. A photograph, essay, drawing collection, or local history book may encourage further interaction between neighbours who might otherwise never meet.

The project transforms library architecture into a framework for collective authorship.

Library Architecture Carved Into the Landscape

The formal organisation of BIND is closely connected to its topographic site. Instead of placing a singular monumental building on the land, the proposal appears to carve the library directly into the terrain.

The architectural composition is divided into a series of low, elongated fragments. These structures follow the slope of the site and create a network of narrow pathways, book-lined corridors, open spaces, and planted surfaces.

There is no single dominant facade. The visual identity of each fragment is formed by the books stored within it. Shelving becomes structure, enclosure, interior finish, and public interface.

This fragmented arrangement allows the architecture to function as a landscape rather than a conventional object building. Visitors move between individual wings, outdoor reading areas, planted courtyards, and circulation routes. The library can be approached from multiple directions and explored without following a rigid institutional sequence.

The result is a porous environment in which architecture, vegetation, books, and movement are continuously interwoven.

Bookshelves as the Architectural Skin

In BIND, the bookshelf is not treated as movable furniture placed inside a completed room. It is one of the primary architectural components.

The sectional drawings show integrated bookcase enclosures positioned along both sides of the circulation spaces. Glass bookcase doors protect the collection while maintaining visual access. Metal panel shelves, structural columns, access panels, automatic doors, and service systems are combined into compact modular units.

Because the collection is visible from the pathways, the books define the character of each architectural fragment. As the shelves fill, the elevations change. Newly printed publications gradually create colour, density, texture, and visual variation.

The architecture therefore has no permanent finished appearance. Its skin changes as the collection grows.

This relationship between books and facade reinforces the project’s larger concept. The community does not only determine what knowledge is stored within the library. Its contributions also shape how the library looks.

A Digital Process Supporting an Analog Experience

Although BIND is centred on physical books, its service model is supported by contemporary digital technology.

Users can browse the collection remotely through a computer, tablet, or mobile device. The digital interface updates in real time as books arrive, are borrowed, or leave the library. When a desired title is unavailable, the visitor can submit a request for the book to be produced on site.

A printing and binding system then creates the publication. Once the process is complete, the user receives a notification stating that the book is ready, together with its location inside the library.

The physical object can then be collected from a designated shelf. After reading, the user returns the book to any open position, where the system registers its new location and makes it available to another visitor.

This workflow combines the convenience of digital search with the tactile and social qualities of printed media. Technology does not replace the book. Instead, it supports the book’s production, movement, discovery, and circulation.

Robotic Library Services

One of the most distinctive elements of the proposal is its use of librarian robots. The sectional drawings illustrate mobile robotic units operating within the shelving corridors.

These machines receive book requests, assist with printing and binding, transport publications, organise the collection, and track the position of returned material. Their compact scale allows them to navigate the narrow routes created between the bookcase structures.

By automating repetitive logistical tasks, the project reduces the need for conventional storage rooms, service desks, staff offices, and back-of-house circulation. This allows the architecture to remain closely focused on access to books and interaction between users.

The robots are not presented as characters that dominate the space. They function as quiet service infrastructure within the broader architectural system.

This decision supports the project’s lean organisational model. The library removes many secondary programme requirements while retaining its central purpose: providing access to knowledge.

Print-on-Demand and the Reduction of Waste

BIND does not require every possible title to be stored before it is requested. Publications are printed according to demand, reducing the need for large quantities of unused or duplicated stock.

This process connects production directly to community interest. A book enters the collection because at least one person has requested, created, or valued it. Once produced, it remains available for future readers.

The evolving collection becomes both efficient and culturally specific. Rather than attempting to represent every subject equally from the beginning, it grows in response to actual patterns of use.

Each item carries evidence of participation. Even a niche publication has value because it reflects the interest of at least one community member. Over time, the collection becomes increasingly diverse without depending on a fixed curatorial framework.

Green Roofs and a Living Architectural Surface

The planted roofs are essential to BIND’s visual and spatial identity. Dense vegetation covers the low library fragments, allowing the architecture to blend into the surrounding hillside.

From above, the roofs appear as pieces of cultivated landscape separated by paths and narrow openings. The individual buildings become less visible, while the planted surfaces establish continuity with the larger site.

At ground level, the green roofs frame the circulation corridors and create a strong contrast with the illuminated bookcases below. Visitors move through spaces that feel simultaneously architectural and landscape-based.

The roofs also reinforce the concept of gradual transformation. Vegetation develops through seasonal and environmental change, while the collection expands through cultural participation. Both the physical landscape and the library’s intellectual content evolve over time.

The building is therefore never presented as complete. It continues to grow, fill, weather, and adapt.

Colour, Light, and Wayfinding

Although the overall architecture is restrained, selected fascia and soffit elements introduce soft coral, yellow, blue, and neutral tones. These coloured roof edges help differentiate the individual fragments and provide subtle orientation across the site.

Linear integrated lighting defines the circulation routes and bookcase edges. At dusk, these illuminated lines create a legible network through the landscape, guiding visitors between shelves, courtyards, and collection zones.

The lighting also emphasises the project’s fragmented geometry. Rather than illuminating a single central hall, it traces multiple paths and entrances. This strengthens the idea that the library is an open network without one fixed beginning or endpoint.

An Inclusive Model of Library Architecture

BIND promotes inclusivity by allowing all community members to participate in the creation of the collection. The project does not limit cultural production to recognised authors, major publishers, or formal institutions.

A personal photographic study can occupy the same architectural system as a bestseller. A locally written history can be placed beside fiction, research, poetry, or experimental publications. The value of the collection emerges from contribution and use rather than from an externally imposed hierarchy.

This openness allows the library to reflect multiple voices. The collection may be irregular, surprising, incomplete, or highly specific, but those qualities become evidence of the community that produced it.

The architectural system is also designed as a transferable strategy. Its topographic shelving, modular construction, low programme requirements, and reduced conditioning needs allow the principle to be adapted to different sites and terrains.

BIND is therefore conceived not only as one library, but as a model that could respond to different communities while producing a distinct collection in each location.

A Library That Evolves Over Time

The most important quality of BIND is its capacity for change.

At the beginning, the shelves are empty and the roofs are newly planted. Over time, books begin to appear, pathways become familiar, and vegetation matures. The architecture gradually gains density, memory, and identity.

This transformation is visible to the people who use the building. Community members can observe how their individual contributions become part of a larger shared resource.

The library is not defined by a completed collection or a fixed appearance. Its value lies in the process of becoming.

Every printed book, borrowed title, returned publication, planted surface, and social exchange contributes to that process.

Juror Commentary

Juror Eduardo Aizenman recognised the strength of BIND’s participatory premise, particularly its positioning of the community as the creator, curator, and consumer of the collection.

He commented:

“Community as creator, curator and consumer. Wonderful theoretical concept without the design behind it to push it as a very real alternative to the competitions’ aim. Would really like this project to keep on working the ideas set forth.”

The comment highlights both the project’s conceptual ambition and the need for further architectural development. While the community-driven service model was viewed as compelling, the juror suggested that the proposal required a stronger design resolution to establish itself as a fully convincing alternative library model.

This criticism is valuable because BIND operates at the intersection of architectural form, automated infrastructure, publishing technology, and social organisation. Its continued development would require these systems to be resolved with greater technical, operational, and spatial precision.

Redefining the Purpose of the Library

BIND does not attempt to compete with digital media by introducing more entertainment programmes, event spaces, cafes, offices, or multipurpose facilities. Instead, it returns to the fundamental relationship between people and books.

Its innovation lies in changing who creates the collection, how books are produced, how they are stored, and how the architecture grows around them.

Through topographic shelving, print-on-demand publishing, robotic services, green roofs, open circulation, and community curation, the proposal creates a new interpretation of library architecture.

The building begins empty, but it is not without purpose. Its blank shelves represent possibility. Every future publication becomes a record of participation, and every reader contributes to the continued formation of the institution.

BIND ultimately presents the library as a living repository of shared knowledge, one that is written, assembled, inhabited, and continuously transformed by its community.