The enduring value of somewhere else

We've gone remote and I'm dying for the real place.

Sometimes you’re right even if you’re not sure why.

Lately I’ve been doing something I’ve spent years trying not to do, and that’s thinking about my graduate architecture thesis. I rarely find myself satisfied by things I wrote even one year ago, let alone fourteen, and I’m sure I’d cringe myself right through the floor if I actually read it now. It’s a rambling document full of half-formed conclusions and naive idealism, one that my thesis advisor nicely told me he was going to stop reading after it surpassed 100 pages. (He meant this in a mostly positive way.)

(I think.)

My goal at the time was to speak on the future of public libraries in an increasingly digital world, a somewhat prescient notion but one whose landing I don’t think I stuck at all. “Do we still need the physical space of a library?” was the question I posed, with the intent of answering “yes” in any way I could, because I adore libraries, both as a civic institution and a physical place. I prattled on about notions of…