

With the original powder-coated aluminum shelves from the office (a design by Keller Easterling), and through a series of strategic work orders for CCNY’s Office of Facilities Management to knock down walls and open doors, Terragni transformed what had been a slide library, and librarian’s office, and classroom, and storage space into the Michael Sorkin Book Collection, a new stand-alone reading room in Spitzer’s library, inaugurated in December 2022. An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire s Tableaux parisiens. For her friend, she conceived and designed a project that preserved the library’s integrity while preparing it for a new destiny.

When personal libraries are absorbed into larger ones, their logic disappears and their integrity is threatened institutions don’t want to waste space on duplicate volumes or materials that defy classification. She is also an expert in the complicated architecture of private libraries and archives - notably, the restoration of writer Ismail Kadare’s Tirana apartment into a house museum - and the difficulties of preserving and presenting them in new contexts. Unpacking My Library Share this Article: Also Available: Unpacking My Library Writers and Their Books. Paging Miss Marchmont (I love Memory to-night ) Public objects are hoarded for purely private means. Over a few frantic weeks in April and May, they documented the office shelf by shelf, then dismantled those shelves, packed the books in some 120 boxes, and drove them in a rented van to the shut-down university building.Īrchitect Elisabetta Terragni had been spending time in Sorkin’s office as they worked together on a joint competition submission. unpacking my library: collecting books (and music). A small group of faculty from the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York approached Sorkin’s wife, theorist Joan Copjec, about bringing his library to the school where he was distinguished professor and led the urban design program since 2000. When I called my parents to let them know my trip had concluded. I recently returned to tiny Gambier from a week-long sojourn in New York City. In the darkest days of the pandemic, his colleagues and collaborators took up the somber task of closing down the office and preserving the books in a new and permanent resting place uptown. Last night, in the midst of moving books all over my house, I took the opportunity to revisit Walter Benjamin’s 1931 essay Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. In March 2020, the formidable architect, critic, and educator became one of the early victims of the coronavirus in New York. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. Indeed, contemplating leaving his overpriced studio on Varick Street, Sorkin had been rethinking the categorization of the 2359 volumes shelved there. vadivukarasilearnaspireinspire abarna'Unpacking My Library' is among the most personal and informal essays in Illuminations, displaying on the whole a conv. Michael Sorkin moved his library many times, each relocation of his office prompting reflection on its organization.
