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Students ‘find’ new Lockwood
Graduate architecture students’ projects applying wayfinding theories to their designs of Lockwood Library are on view in an exhibit, “Finding a New Lockwood: Beyond 75,” in the second-floor lobby of the library. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“While the university may be talking about the ‘Heart of the Campus,’ I feel these students gave soul to the libraries.”
In the second-floor lobby of Lockwood Library, an exhibit called “Finding a New Lockwood: Beyond 75” is on display showcasing the wayfinding design projects of a graduate studio class in the School of Architecture and Planning.
The exhibit, which includes descriptions, illustrations and three-dimensional design models of a re-envisioned library, will be on view through the end of May and celebrates Lockwood’s 75th anniversary this year.
Wayfinding traditionally has referred to how travelers found unmarked routes, but it is now an architectural term for how we navigate through the built environment. Wayfinding systems rely on such environmental and sensory cues as signs, paths, landmarks, color and spatial design. Emerging means of wayfinding include digital technology, space planning, branding and audio communication.
Beth Tauke, associate professor of architecture, organized the course for master’s students in the Inclusive Design Graduate Research Group. They spent the fall applying wayfinding theories to their own designs of Lockwood that also incorporated inclusive design—elements that all people can use, no matter what their ability level. A common example would be an elevator with large, easy-to-read buttons and raised Braille lettering.
Ken Hood, facilities planning and management officer for the University Libraries, contacted the school last summer about developing a wayfinding course focusing on Lockwood; Tauke jumped at the chance to develop a syllabus.
Hood served as a staff liaison for the project, helping Tauke and her students with their research. He also encouraged Tauke to recruit several graduates of the studio course for an independent study group this spring. The group designed and built the “Beyond 75” exhibit and is publishing a booklet of the designs. They will formally present the studio’s work to University Libraries staff at a meeting on May 11.
“This has been a great collaboration between Ken and the students, who have learned a lot about the how Lockwood can be used to study core wayfinding principles,” Tauke says.
The class of 12 students was split into four groups and assigned two main class exercises before each student designed his or her own concept of what Lockwood would look like with improved wayfinding. Students also read Juhani Pallasmaa’s “The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses,” and each produced a video narration that interpreted the book chapters.
In the first exercise, students literally had to “find” Lockwood from a different point of origin on campus (such as Governors Plaza or South Lake Village). Each group shadowed a member who was unfamiliar with North Campus, like second-year master’s student Lauren Pacheco.
“I was the test,” she says. “Many of us often found ourselves completely lost.”
One student in her group posed as a physically challenged visitor in a wheelchair in order to test the library’s handicapped accessibility.
In the second exercise, the groups had to explore the library’s collections and retrieve a book or document, armed only with its title. Tauke says that this “field work” was designed to help students identify and experience first hand the library’s existing channels and barriers to successful wayfinding.
Tauke’s studio class also took a trip to New York City to observe a variety of novel wayfinding environments, including the Guggenheim Museum and High Line Park—a former elevated freight-train line on Manhattan’s West Side that is being converted into a public green space.
Compared to some of the sites the students saw, Lockwood’s wayfinding is mixed. Signs are plentiful, but not inclusively designed for the blind. The title search proved to be easier for one group than for another, whose team leader was Chinese and new to the United States, let alone UB. (He had to locate an instructional document in his native language before the search could begin.)
Perhaps most frustrating of all is the first-floor entrance that forces visitors to travel up a set of stairs to reach the library on the second floor. The only elevator that physically challenged visitors can use is in adjacent Baldy Hall.
“The exterior is not iconic,” Pacheco says of Lockwood’s anonymous brick facade. Her project envisions it as a wayfinding beacon of sorts, wrapped in overlapping, wavy panels of glass and wood. This external “weaving” also would help reflect natural light into interior study areas and other nooks and crannies. “I wanted the outside of the library to have some presence on campus,” she says.
Still, says classmate Dan Chorley, “They do a pretty good job of connecting the library to the Spine, once you’re inside.”
Chorley’s wayfinding solutions for Lockwood focus on what he calls “programmatic bundling,” where areas are designed around specific activities. New spaces are created and grouped either for individual studying or for socializing in groups.
Nearly all the students used wayfinding techniques to improve Lockwood’s entrances and exits, and to re-imagine the role of modern academic libraries in the lives of students who rely more on laptop computers and iPhones than on actual books for finding information.
Pacheco, for instance, situated Lockwood’s social spaces closer to Founders Plaza “to help connect the Student Union and other social spaces to the more group-oriented areas inside the library,” she explains.
Chorley plays with the library term “circulation” by pushing the flow of traffic out to the exterior walls while tucking away private study areas on Lockwood’s underused upper floors.
“We all focused on the evolution to more socialization and computing,” agrees MJ Carroll, a self-described non-traditional student who commutes to UB from Toronto. However, despite libraries’ shrinking budgets for physical collections and a growing focus on digital media, she prefers the “old school” feel and smell of books. “They’ll always be an important part of life on campus,” she says.
Hood is excited to see how the students’ ideas might expand on the concepts in the Building UB comprehensive physical plan to improve access and ease navigation on its campuses. “While the university may be talking about the ‘Heart of the Campus,’ I feel these students gave soul to the libraries.”
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