An “urban book alley” is designed for the City of Ithaca. The goal: to revitalize the axial alignment between The Commons and Tompkins Public Library, inserting an experiential narrative that would lead the visitor from the city’s main public space to the library building.

A physical model of the alley is produced and documented through photography and digital imaging. Conceptually, the intervention envisions two sharp “cuts” that ‘slice’ the edges of the alley at a subtle angle of 2.5 degrees, generating a perspectival cue that expands the axis into The Commons. The voids that are generated fron this ‘slicing’ are replenished with the pages of a book that literally curl and bend above the visitor, at times generating a vaulted canopy along the promenade

A ramp is designed to slope downwards into the Urban Book, submerging the visitor into the alley and muting the sounds of the city as he penetrates its pages. The ramp then slopes upwards and re-introduces the visitor back into the city.

Programmatically, this Urban Book allows the daily activities of Tompkins Library to spill into the town’s main public square, generating spaces that could be potentially used as a reading alley, a book fair, or a fairly unconventional exhibition venue.