This summer the People’s Library has partnered with Superfront and artist collective DADDY in a project called the Library of Immediacy. Superfront challenged designers to create a semi-outdoor structure for our library within a set of strict parameters in a two-hour charrette that took place on June 10, 2012.
One of the aims of the project is to explore the notion of the library: to create and promote engagement, prompt collaboration and participation within a temporary public space–some of what we at the People’s Library do best! The project will serve as an evolving art installation, a functioning library and a welcoming gathering place.
Here are details about the winning design. The structure is currently being built for us on Governor’s Island–we plan to move a portion of the collection in to the space in the next few weeks.
The library will be open on Governor’s Island weekends from July 21st through September 23rd. Check back here for details about library programming and info on the opening party.
Occupy Wall Street Library 
Great place for the Library! It is a beautiful setting. I lived on Governor’s Island from 1983 until 1986. My husband was in the Coast Guard at the time :)
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Good grief. Could you find a more inaccessible location if you tried? This guarantees that these books will not reach the people who could really use a free library. I’m beginning feel slighted as a brooklynite, at the weird snobbery involved by the mostly manhattanized leadership in ignoring this borough. I fund it the height of myopia to put a library on an island far away from 3 million people who could use a library. Epic fail.
oh Eric, please lighten up. We’re Brooklynites too–not sure what the ‘manhattanized leadership’ is you’re talking about. we follow up on every lead we get to find space for the library so we can get it to the people who need it–we’ve got stuff going in Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and stuff coming up in Sunset Park but it’s all volunteer and it’s all from love. Governor’s Island was another opportunity to get the library out into the public space. Having the People’s Library set up ANYWHERE is better than having it locked up in storage. Win!
Lose. The books were donated to occupiers. What\’s left of the occupiers who are still homeless, still mostly without internet access, and still facing police brutality on a day-to-day basis – largely people whose daily trials are so all-consuming that they would not bother to go to a public library (out of their way, costly to get to by train, embarrassing to be in because they haven\’t showered and feel barely human) – sleep near Union, Washington, and Liberty Squares. They still have a medic or two, and they still rely on each other and one to five remaining kitchen volunteers for food. I spent March and April tending the book collection with Darah. We were the only two people taking books out in crates to these homeless activists. They smile and are grateful to have books to pass the time. Many of these are people who linked arms around the kitchen during the raid, and they feel abandoned by the people with jobs and homes who decided to stop protesting once they realized they might get arrested for it. WE FAILED THE MOVEMENT. You, me, and everyone who gave up trying to defend the community we built. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU GIVING BOOKS TO ON SOME ISLAND? I would be carrying them out of storage in crates myself and giving them to people on the street had my storage unit keys not been recalled by \”library consensus.\” I didn\’t leave the library. The clusterfuck decision-making structure we put in place failed the library\’s mission. Go to Union Square, look Ed the homeless medic in the eye, and be ashamed. I have left town again. Take responsibility for the community you abandoned or stop using its name.
PS- If any of you useless people feels inclined to take Ed a book, he is interested in pre-Socratic philosophy.
C’mon, what better to unite the people than conceptual art?!?