The hybrid nature of the building's program became the central idea behind the design of the project.
The combination of office, retail and library funcions was an attempt to investigate the possibility of integrating
a public amenity space directly within a private building. The implication of such a collision of uses
was not only the potential for public cost savings and the promotion of public construction, but as well a
possibility of the creation of a symbiotic relationship between these two forces. The private spaces of the
building could make use of some of the public, while the public spaces could make use of some of the
private.
The project took on a diagramatic and absract nature early on, detatched architecturally somewhat
from surrounding site conditions in order to investigate the possibilities of connecting and overlapping the
building's public and private uses. An early series of diagrams and sectional sketches began to shape the
building in its beginning. The three major elements of the program (office, library and retail) were initially
separated vertically in space. The retail occupied the ground floor, the library the second, and the offices the
final and third. However, the idea of interrelation of the spaces required a greater extent of overlapping and
mixture. Thus, the strategy of a split-level shceme started to emerge. The three separations remained
somewhat intact, however separated by intermittent split levels. These split levels contained spaces which
could relate to either the floor directly above or below. The idea was that these 'shared' spaces could contain
elements of the program which could be used by both library and retail, or by both office and library. The net
result was a 'saving' of space, as well as a mixing of public and private functions.
Yet, with the mixing of public and private uses came the architectural issue of building security. How
could a public book enter and leave a retail store? How could a private office be contained from public
access? Would the separate retail units truly relate with the library space? Were there more possibilies for
more double uses?
The library took on the role of both public amenity and private retail enterprise at this point in the
project. The move seemed to satisfy both issues of security and interrelationship between public and private
functions. The security system of the library would double as the cash desk; the library stacks would contain
both borrowable books and commercial retail goods for consumption; the seating for the library would also
provide for the in-house cafe-bar; library staff would also function as staff for the shared smaller offices on
the second floor. In this sense, the combination of private and public functions not only reduced the need for
excess (publically funded) space, but aslo presented the idea of a saving of maintenance and operational
costs.
The location of the building in Whistler village was done for two main reasons: the town, at present,
is currently without a permanent library for a rapidly growing full-time population; and the town, as a resort
municipality, relies heavily on its commercial activity in order to energize its main, public pedestrian outdoor
mall. The specific site of the building was a point in the village which related both directly to this
pedestrian mall as well as an adjacent shopping centre, intended for the vehicular traffic and use of the more
full-time residents of Whistler Village. Here the full time residents coming in to use the library could
perhaps discover its second commercial nature, while tourists may make use of the public use of the building
while going in soley to shop. The building would then be a place where both full-time residents and incidental
tourists could both come, interacting within the same building for an array of different reasons.
Architecturally, the building was a modest success: the issue of security had been adressed and overlapping
of private and public functions was explored in the building. However, the notion that a library
would become a highly commercial retailer still seemed improbable; even in an age of decreasing government
spending and reliance upon the private sector for public services, the difficulty in motivating a traditionally
public sector into an entrepreneurially self-sustaining enterprise prevented the likelihood of its
construction. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/7956 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Mallen, Peter J. W. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 4406615 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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