Garden Library

Beside the Hudson River, Jersey City, New Jersey

The “Garden Library” reinterprets library typology with gardening tools and planting within the mobile car and uses seeds as the main material to support the soft fabric to form the pillows within the interior.

During the pandemic, many indoor public places, such as libraries, were closed. As a result, many people could not easily borrow-return books and look up various documents they needed in the library as before.
The interaction between children and children, parents and parents, and parents and children in the community dropped sharply during the pandemic.

This "Garden Library" uses the Library's borrow-return model as a template, and aims to provide a welcoming place for children and parents in this community who are interested in planting to learn more about the plants grown indoors in each season, at the same time increase the social interaction between parents and children, parents and parents through planting-related activities.

The process of this program is that children and parents come to this mobile, learn about the plant information that can be grown indoors in the season, select the plant seeds and planters, and go to the designated area nearby to design and cultivate their potted plants. The paint, seeds, planter and gardening tools will all be provided by the staff of this program. The completed plants with planters will be temporarily left on the site until the plants fully bloom and bear fruit. (The accumulation of colorful designed planters would be a display that would decorate the van’s interior space) During the growth period, parents and children can check the growth status of the plants every other day, and the staff will also help take care of them. In addition, the mobile also provides rescue services for dying plants in order to help the local residents who love planting.

After I have a clear idea of the programs, I start layout and sketch out my design ideas. Since each plant in the van has a life circle and people are going to witness the growth of plants in the van, I suddenly came up with the idea of “hourglass shelves”. I considered it as a symbol of a witness of plants’ growing process in the van, which means when the “sands of time” runs out, the plants are right at the stage of blooming.

Traditional Library - Garden Library (Typology)

The mobile itself represents the “kiosk, seed bank and reception desk”

The little hill area as “bookshelves”

Plants, planters, tools and gardening related books as “books that contain in the library”

Educational center as “public used study space”

Workspace as “library event space”

FURNITURES DESIGN

Considering the main object in the van is the seeds, I tried to explore how to use the seeds and applied them to each section of the space to create a similar design language. As discussion with yunong, I decided to fill the pillows with various kinds of seeds and those pillows would be placed on the curvy chair, bean bags, and attached on the counters.

The counter on the entrance is covered with all pillows so when children lean over or touch the counter, they would feel the softness and hear the sound of the seeds. Each pillow could be opened so children could take out several seeds if they wanted to.