Every-where is here: architecture and a developing information society.

Abstract

‘Bit by bit’ our Societies are moving through an Information Age, characterized by a global shift towards an increased need for Information. In an instantaneous age of digital information, the ability to access the world’s knowledge from anywhere and by anyone is an inevitable reality, but not yet true for communities on the other side of the digital divide. With technology becoming cheaper and faster the Digital Divide must be seen as more than lack of hardware, and rather as a cultural divide. Nurturing Information Societies in a developing context needs a bottom-up approach that applies local cultures and methods of interaction to the global trends of the Information Age. By providing free access to the world’s knowledge and interfaces between the virtual and the real, public space and the Library as historic resource centres must be the first to embrace a new era in digital information and its potential for narrowing the cultural divide and most importantly, educating for a new culture of use. This thesis explores a spatial re-interpretation and an adaptation of the traditional information platform within a developing world context and concludes with the design of an open-information-campus model. The building model provides for new ways of thinking about the social interactivity, the remix culture and the innovative opportunities provided for by the Network Age’s emancipated information landscape.