Excavated Reading

For this building, I created a reading room and an archive within the environment assigned, which is a 900ft deep granite quarry in Vermont. I came up with the idea of having a consistent zig-zag circulation path by creating an offset between the two rooms and through the placement of windows in the reading room. In the top right corner of the building, there is a floor window that allows a viewer to see all the way to the bottom of the mine due to the slight overhang over the cliff. The archive is meant to be more secluded and dark while there is a stark and drastic transition to the reading room that is full of light from above, below, and the sides. Through the manipulation of light and the offset of the buildings, a person within the space will experience a transition from dark to light and from seclusion to transparency as they follow the path of circulation through the space.