The precedents for this study have been chosen both for their conceptual relevance, as well as the material ways in which they convey their ideas. The first precedent, a work of ‘conceptual art’ by Mona Hatoum entitled "+ and –”, is essentially a 3-dimensional self-erasing drawing. A motor-driven arm, rotating at five rpm on a central pivot, draws circular lines in a bed of sand with one end while the other end of the arm immediately erases them. Michael Archer, in his monograph on the artist, describes the work as a "reductio ad absurdum of a closed system, a paradigm of the inseparable but ambiguous relationship of opposites, an ironic automation of the artist’s volitional act of marking and rubbing out, ‘a sense existence accentuated by the fear of disappearance’.” [75] The work is highly potent in the sense that it employs very minimal, and rather poor, physical and material means to achieve its strong psychological impact and its complex conceptual resonances. The relationship between presence and absence in it is simultaneous (in the sense that the same movement which creates the lines in the sand is the one that erases them), and repetitive in a highly precise and uniform automated cyclical pattern. The act of inscribing and effacing, however, remains independent of the observer due to automation, thus the relationship between the subject and the work is reduced to one of observation.

The second precedent, in contrast, employs the public’s participation in the work as an integral part of its conception and operation. The "Monument against Fascism, War and Violence—and for Peace and Human Rights” by Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz began as a forty-foot-high, three-foot-square hollow aluminum pillar plated with a thin layer of soft, dark lead that stood in the commercial center of Harburg, Germany, "a somewhat dingy suburb of Hamburg”.[76] The work is essentially a "vanishing monument”, or "countermonument”, as James Young refers to it, which invites the public’s desecration of the work, and then links that process to the work’s disappearance. In fact the explicit invitation, as well as the tools, for ‘violating the work’ was provided with it. An inscription near the base of the column read: We invite the citizens of Harburg, and visitors to the town, to add their names here to ours. In doing so, we commit ourselves to remain vigilant. As more and more names cover this 12 meter tall lead column, it will gradually be lowered into the ground. One day it will have disappeared completely, and the site of the Harburg monument against fascism will be empty. In the end, it is only we ourselves who can rise up against injustice. [77] Pointed steel styluses were attached at the corners of the column for scoring the soft lead plating. As five-foot sections of the column were covered with memorial graffiti, the ‘monument’ was lowered into the ground into a chamber as deep as the column was high. Thus, the more actively the visitors engaged in this act of desecration, the faster the ‘monument’ disappeared. As such, Young notes, "the vanishing monument has returned the burden of memory to the visitors: now all that stands here are the memory-tourists, forced to rise and to remember for themselves.”[78]

Thanks to its severely minimal means of expression, the work manages to achieve a staggering array of ideological resonances and nuances. It challenges the authority and sanctity of the traditional conception of memorial monuments, "undermin[ing] its own authority by inviting and then incorporating the authority of passerby”. [79] It reminds of the limitation of memorials, that "all monuments can ever do is rise up symbolically against injustice” and hope that that would inspire the more genuine and enduring form of resistance, that of the public.[80] As would be expected, the work was highly controversial. It was likened to "a great black knife in the back of Germany, slowly being plunged in, each thrust solemnly commemorated by the community, a self-mutilation, a kind of topographical hara-kiri.” [81] The monument seemed to embody "not only the Germans’ secret desire that all these monuments just hurry up and disappear but also the urge to strike back at such a memory, to sever it from the national body like a wounded limb”. [82] More importantly perhaps, the monument became a "social mirror” that was "doubly troubling” in that it reminded the community not only of what happened, but "even worse”, it seemed to throw back at them their response to the memory of that past. [83] "People had come at night to scrape over all the names, even to pry the lead plating off its base. There were hearts with ‘Jòrgen liebt Kirsten’ written inside, Stars of David, and funny faces daubed in paint and marker pen. Inevitably, swastikas began to appear.” [84] As such, Young sees, "the countermonument accomplished what all monuments must: it reflected back to the people—and thus codified—their own memorial projections and preoccupations.” [85] Ultimately, in an act of ingeniously simple inversion of ‘memorial monument’ to ‘memory of a monument’, the Gerzes seemed to assert that "the best memorial… may be no monument at all, but only the memory of an absent monument”. [86] As such, using very minimal aesthetic as well as tectonic means, the work manages to evoke highly sophisticated feelings and ideas, now with the engagement of an additional potent element, that of the public’s participation. Thus the public becomes not only the observer, or even the author of the work; but the public becomes the work.

In the third precedent, a "Club/Bar/Exhibition” space by Bernd Mey in Frankfurt, Germany called "U 60311”, memory is not event-specific as much as it is site-specific. While the "Monument against Fascism…” dealt with the memory of a more or less specific event (namely that of the Holocaust, despite the disconcertingly general title of the work), its site lacked specificity in relation to the commemorated event. "U 60311”, on the other hand, seems to be all about the memory of the site, with no particular event or agenda to commemorate. Thus it lacks the highly emotionally charged, symbolically laden sensibility of the "Monument against Fascism…”, though it shares with it (as well as with the first precedent) a comparably minimal language, and an impoverished aesthetic, this time derived from the history of the site, tackling the memory of the site with comparably admirable refinement of thought. In addition to that, U 60311 shares with Hatoum’s "+ and –” a sense of recycling. The site, an abandoned subway station and underpass, was sealed off from public use for years. Mey recycled materials and objects found at the site, making them an integral part of the new existence of the site. Such materials as the wooden planks that covered the entrances for years, plans of the station, showcases and plastic containers with samples of earth collected during the construction of the subway become part of the making of the new identity of the site, as well as part of its exhibits.

As the project currently stands, it is expressed above ground with three volumes that cover the old entrances to the subway: pavilion A, which is the main entrance, and pavilions C and D. The fourth entrance, B, is not expressed by an above ground volume; its stair standing exposed. The transparent containers filled with earth, extracted during the drilling for the Frankfurt subway, became part of the enclosure of pavilion A. Lit from behind, the façade turns into an installation: Illuminated Earth. The planks that used to cover the entrance of the abandoned station were incorporated into the making of pavilions C and D. Each of these pavilions has a concrete base and a glazed upper section. The planks were used as forms for the concrete bases, and the impressions they left were photographed and printed on the glass of the upper section: the Luminous Wood-Imprint-Concrete. Thus, instead of merchandise, these windows display now the planks. The plans of the station, as well as other material found during exploration of the station, were incorporated into the basement, as wall lining as well as part of the exhibit. Fragments of these found documents were printed on black paper that now lines the walls of the basement.[87] As such the site was literally recycled, reusing old found elements in ways that range from the integral (in the making, construction, form-work and enclosure) to the visual (printing and reprinting). Some of these reuses stand ambiguously between the two ends, such as the transparent earth containers in pavilion A, at once part of the building, and yet it can be questioned if they are any more than mere display, albeit more deeply integrated.

Due to its previous function, the entrance pavilions to "U 60311” are relegated to the sidewalk corners of a T-intersection. Separated thus above ground by automobile traffic, the entrances are connected underground by the main space of the club/bar/exhibit. As such the event of the program become the instance of celebration of the connection of disparate and disjointed access points, yet retaining its quality as a connecting circulation space.

The fourth precedent, "B018”, another bar/nightclub, now in Beirut, acts as a precedent dually. While I am presenting its present articulation as an architectural precedent, I am presenting its ‘institution’ as a more direct programmatic precedent. "B018” came into being during the war as a series of "musical therapy” sessions, private parties held in the apartment of its present manager Nagi Gebran. B018 was the code number of that apartment/studio, situated 18 km north of Beirut, then in East Beirut. Gebran, a musician and cofounder of alternative jazz band "Wrong Approach”, lived in the unit B018 from 1984 to 1993, during which his "alternative sessions” gained popularity and reputation amongst the closed, "underground” circles of the city. At the end of 1993, Gebran moved out of his studio and decided to take the B018 public for the first time. The first public version of B018 was built in an industrial sector of the north east suburbs of Beirut. It operated without a permit in a 200 sq.m. "black box” structure, its only access a dirt road. The "unusual music” and "strange atmosphere” were the main ingredients of the B018 concept, which "quickly became a surprising reflection of the night scene in Beirut”. It was obvious that "B018 was a definite success”. By May 1997, Gebran was forced to leave the premises. B018 had to find a new address.[88]

Bernard Khoury, a US-educated Lebanese architect, was in charge of "the architectural concept and execution, the scenography and furniture design” of the new B018. "The building was executed and ready to operate in a record time of 6 months.” On April 18 1998, the new B018 opened its doors to the public. The site is located near the seaport of Beirut. During the French mandate, this zone was the quarantine of the port of Beirut, hence its name, "la quarantaine”. Later on it was "infested by war refugees”: from Lebanese from the south, to Palestinians and Kurds. In 1975, the refugees in the area numbered around 20 000. In January of 1976, the Phalangist militia launched an attack on the quarantine, leaving the area devastated. The highway that borders the site is the main northern access to the city. Across the highway are the densely populated quarters of the "river of Beirut” area. The B018 will remain there until the expiry date of the rental contract (Nov. 8, 2003), when it’s going to have to locate a new address. [89]

Khoury’s B018 is set entirely below ground level. It is covered by heavy black steel roof which retracts and folds out "as darkness falls”. Both the structure and panels of the roof made of steel. Conceived of as a structurally autonomous cap, its anchoring is imbedded under the circular concrete slab. The roof is composed of five moving panels (one flap and four sliding) activated by hydraulic pistons. When open, the 26 sq.m. roof flap, with its under-face of 126 reflecting panels, becomes the effective ‘façade’ of the project. As such, its surface reflects a "descriptive section of the project, the contrasted superposition of contradictory conditions”: the density of the quarters of the "River of Beirut” as a backdrop, the highway axis drawn by the rapid passage of the cars’ headlamps, the parking "carrousel” and its lighting "crown”, and the spectacle of the hall ended by a birds eye view of the bar on the foreground. The distortion of the reflected images is only accentuated by the fragmentation of the panel. Opened, the roof releases sounds and light reflections, "stretch[ing] the limits of the place, and extend[ing] the atmosphere to the outside”. As such, its closing becomes "a voluntary gesture of disappearance, a strategy of recess”. [90]

This strategy seems necessary given the ‘overexposure’ of the site, which Khoury admits was "originally incompatible with the origins of the B018.” Yet in the three incarnations that the B018 has had so far, one can start to elucidate a pattern of increasing exposure: from private "sessions”, to a public bar/club in a deserted industrial area accessible only through a dirt road, to its present siting near a major highway, and across from a densely populated area. It can be argued that, although the present scheme is literally underground, it predecessor more "underground”—not literally, but legally and through its siting, access, etc. And it is this pattern that I tried to represent in my mapping of precedents, "Modes of Absence/Cycles of Erasure”. And it is based on the same pattern of increasing exposure that I suggest the proposed site for the next B018, in the (empty) ‘heart’ of Beirut.

Khoury’s scheme attracted another form of overexposure as well, in architectural journals and magazines. It became the most published ‘building’ in Lebanon, putting to shame such other much larger buildings as Pierre Khoury’s new UN headquarters. Husnu Yegenoglu likens the ‘building’ to "a bunker for cruise missiles or an underground war machine.” [91] But as such, he sees it as "an impressive example of an intelligent architectural reaction to the present situation” and "a sublime symbol of Beirut’s condition as a torn metropolis in the transition between a turbulent past and an uncertain future”. Stefano Pavarini, in ARCA Plus, laments the pre-decided limited life span of the ‘building’, stating that, "It is a real pity that this shrine to music will come to an end when the leasing contract expires in the years 2003 and the building will have to be moved. But it would be nice to think that someone is already planning another reincarnation of B018 for that data.” [92]

The two next precedents are recipients of the 48th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards. The first project is a community pavilion by Mark Anderson and Andrew Zago in Detroit, Michigan. I include it here for the way it ‘recycles’ the site, evoking the memory of what was on the site materially, and yet allowing it to transform programmatically. The site is a vacant lot filled with the charred remains of a single-family house that once stood there. The site is situated in a neighborhood known as the Near East Side where such "derelict and similarly burned houses” seem to be in abundance. The project’s program was inspired by the "impromptu seating” found throughout the area where neighbors gather to chat and socialize. The resultant was thus a 1,200 sq. ft. community pavilion for "informal neighborhood gatherings”. The pavilion is made of burned timbers from the house that formerly stood on the site, "and other debris salvaged from the area”. The proposed construction technique is a "seeming contradiction”, "an orderly building up of a jumble of old materials”. The existing basement will be emptied out and filled with parallel, 12-inch-deep rows of debris. The foundation will be built up by placing additional rows perpendicular to those underneath, and concrete poured into the cavity. A dense grid of columns made from salvaged lumber will be inserted into the mix. Above ground, the pavilion’s enclosure will be made of 4 ft. by 4 ft. bundles of charred wood laid in alternating directions within a bolted structural frame of the salvaged wood columns and beams. The pavilion will be roughly two stories above grade, about the mass of the previous house. Its "simultaneously rough and fine wooden filigree” will let light pass through the gas between the bundles of wood. With most of the materials being salvaged refuse and volunteer laborers building the pavilion, the project seems to take the phrase ‘impoverished architecture’ (that I have been repeatedly using) to a new dimension, giving a refreshingly new twist to ‘arte povera meets architecture’ with a structure that is expected to cost no more than $4 per square foot! [93]

The second project uses equally cheap material that is abundantly present at the site for the most part, but I include here more importantly for its approach to the temporality of construction. The project is the Winter Gardens, by Canadian architect Pierre Thibault, in the Parc de Conservation des Grands Jardins, in Charlevoix, Quebec. The Parc, a nature reserve, is a mountainous zone more than 800 meters in altitude. The southernmost taiga in the world, its numerous lakes dot a forest trail that extends over several kilometers through the mountains. The trail is open to the public for recreative activities all year long. The project is part of the Parc’s program of public activities. It aims to induce "an enhanced appreciation of the trail’s seven main lakes” through the deployment of six temporary winter installations. It offers visitors places to stop, "unique visual vantage points” and "refuges”.  The project employs a palette of ephemeral materials such ice, snow, and light (both electrical and candle light), as well as a complementary array of ‘cheap’ materials, such as canvas, metal, and wooden stilts; and pre-manufactured ‘mundane’ objects that are transitory in connotation: camping equipment. The constructions are varied, as are their duration; some installations will last just a few nights, other several weeks or even months. [94]

The first installation, Blue Line, consists of blocks of ice taken from the lake itself and aligned in "a progressive and increasingly close-knit chain” that extends from one side of the lake to the other "like a spinal column or crease”. At night, the ice takes on a blue glow; "it becomes a bridge or a road, a reference point in the dark”. The second installation, Constellation, "redefining the shape of the lake” by lighting 2000 candles in an orthogonal grid over the entire surface of the lake. For one hour every night, fifty people light these candles, each one protected from the wind by a small well of snow. The third, Icebergs, consists of rectangular plaques of ice that are selectively cut out of the lake and placed next to the slots thus created. Lakewater is brought to light and remains so until the gaps freeze over again. The holes in the lake will thus seal over, the sun will melt the blocks of ice and snow will cover again any trace of human intervention, making this installation a sort of a ‘self-effacing’ work reminiscent of Hatoum’s and Gerz’s. The fourth installation, Rhapsody, is comprised of seven hundred and fifty flutes installed in a regular grid over the entire surface of the lake. As the wind blows, air is caught in the flutes, producing a melody whose momentum varies according to the wind’s strength and direction. "The lake sings in the winter silence.” Caravan, the fifth installation, is an alignment of tents across the surface of a lake, with a distance of 20 meters between each one, thus "strip[ping] winter camping of its discretion”. "Through the unbroken line of the tents, transient human presence is sublimated and the tents become either caravan or road, crossing the lake and the forest, reaching out for the horizon.” The sixth and last installation is entitled Refuge. It begins with a series of tree trunks planted in such a way as to blend in with the surrounding natural growth. These gradually become highly squared posts, followed by cubes of wood until small plywood houses mounted on stilts sit right on the lake.[95]

The series of interventions thus attempts to decipher the passage of time through constructed elements, "relatively fleeting phenomena within a natural, apparently immutable environment of staggering proportions”. The project employs the seasons as a mark of time. "Imbued with perennial force, they are the recurring cycles that create rhythm, distinguishing change.” As such, the constructed elements simply act to focus and sharpen perception of place and time. The architect declares, "Human intervention, even that which is small, would allow us to witness the environment in a new way, heightening divisions of time that are naturally occurring: before, after, now.” The Parc des Grands Jardins is a site protected from human intervention. Consequently, "it is not subject to time as perceived within a human framework, and is only modified by its own evolutionary cadence”. Winter Gardens thus reflects time as it occurs within a specific, natural landscape, and the project’s interventions become "fugitives”: "gardens of snow, ice and light come to rest softly on a ground just as impermanent—the frozen lakes of winter.” As an inquiry of space, the project seeks to modify our perception of landscape without permanently altering the environment. The project is equally an encounter with time, making sensations become "curiously dilated” and contrasts increasingly apparent. "Time slows down and, in some cases, even stands still. Our bodies react accordingly. Sensations are more acutely observed, life becomes more intense and time spent with a heightened awareness of space becomes indelibly engraved in our minds.” [96]

In light of the former discussion of the inherently tense, complex and intertwined relationship between memory and forgetting, it would be only appropriate that the program embodies the same kind of highly charged relationship. In hope of clarifying and focusing my intentions, I constructed a conceptual model as a means of further exploring such highly tangled antagonistic relationships. The work, entitled There’s No Forgetting, after the poem by Pablo Neruda on which it is based, is a "Poem Reading/Shredding Machine”. Electrically operated, the device allows the user to read the aforementioned poem using a control knob placed on the side of the box. The knob controls a paper shredder which rolls the poem up the screen by shredding it. Thus the only way that the reader can come to know the poem is by destroying it; the poem can only be presenced through its own annihilation. The roll of paper, however, contains multiple copies of the poem; thus the work operates on a repetitive cycle of reading/destroying, hence the appropriation of the title.

I envision the program as operating with an analogous duality, with memory being presenced/annihilated programmatically as well as materially. The program would consist thus of two seemingly disparate if not antagonistic components that are nevertheless intertwined spatially as well as conceptually. The first component, the "amnesiac”, is a bar/nightclub which programmatically promotes forgetting (of the war, daily concerns, etc.) through engagement in drinking, dancing, etc., while reminding (of the war) tectonically. The second component, the "memorial”, concerns itself directly with the literal act of collecting and processing the memory of the Lebanese War by housing a small institution for scholarly research, along with its archival collection of media records, of the War. However, by directing itself at a highly specific audience of scholars, giving physicality to the memory of the war through its collection yet keeping it out of reach of the ‘general public’, the center would be in effect fostering oblivion towards the war. Thus, a dually antagonistic intertwined relationship emerges.

The bar/nightclub of the first component is a specific actual existent one, namely "B018”, one of this study’s precedents, and an "institution” (or rather "anti-institution”) that embodies in many aspects characteristics of the program. Through its short history B018 has managed to combine an ephemerality and transience of being coupled with a persistence of its existence that make it an ideal vehicle for this thesis’ exploration. Moreover, it has retained its ‘underground’ nature (despite increasing exposure), and has constantly maintained a tectonic (and ontological) connection with the war that is in tune with this thesis’ contention. The second component, on the other hand, is a fictitious institution. It is my thinking that this contrast between the reality/unreality of the two lends another edge to the program, shedding light on further sociopolitical implications.

These two components of the program mark two sites of absence, albeit different types of absence. The new B018 would be located in the ‘island’ below the currently empty pedestal of the Statue of the Martyrs’, while the research/archive center would be located in the now empty site of the late Rivoli Cinema, and the old Petit Serail before it. The former site presents a ‘temporary absence’—for the purposes of ‘restoration’; while the latter present a ‘permanent’ one—for the purpose of opening up the visual axis from Martyrs’ Square to the sea, an axis that is nevertheless currently blocked visually by temporary panels of the construction site beyond. As such, the light from the nightclub below, seeping through a hole in the pedestal where the statue is supposed to be, registers the absence of the statue. And the research/archive center, by registering the current blockage of the visual axis for which the site was cleared through its own obtrusive presence, echoes the irony of the absence on the site, and highlights the randomness and absurdity of absences that write the history of the city. Thus absence becomes a common denominator for both main components of the program as it is the necessary condition on which both memory and oblivion reside.

These two elements of the program, however, are conceived of as transient: the new B018 marks its site, the new ‘margin’ of the city, for as long as it remains a margin. As the urban conditions of the site change, the club has to relocate to a new ‘margin’, thus continuing its ritual of transiency. Similarly, the research/archival center is imagined as a first house in a series for a growing body of intellectual work and archival collection. Thus it is intended to specifically fit a small starting collection of work and artifacts. As this collection grows, the center becomes increasingly congested until it is no longer viable, and the collection has to be relocated to a new ‘house’. This ephemerality of program is to be registered in the construction processes, as well, which ideally would hold within themselves, at least in part, the means or possibility of their dissolution and recycling. One suchtechnique, one with special resonance in terms of the memory of the War, is that of sand bags. This technique not only offers the opportunity to use—recycle—the byproducts of the digging/excavation process, but it also allows the process to become a self-healing one: the sand bags may be emptied after the intervention ‘expires’ to fill the void left behind.

Inherent in the transiency of these two components is thus a justification for an impoverished architecture. Such an architecture understands its ephemerality, and operates accordingly within the status quo. It is an architecture of recycling, both for economic as well as conceptual reasons (of ‘recycling the memory of the site’). Yet in its act of reshuffling, rearranging, and processing the present (both materially and conceptually) it sheds new light on its ‘reality’. As such it surfaces latent realities of the site rather than ‘creates’ them, becoming an act of conceptual excavation of the present tense, and through it the recent past of the War, a response to the escapist archeological excavation of the distant past dominating the city. Hence the city becomes necessarily part of the archive of scholarship for the research center, a ‘living archive’ that allows the processing of the ‘dead archive’ of the War and understanding it in light of the reality of the present, a grounding that seems to be getting ever more elusive in the amnesiac culture of today’s Beirut. Similarly, due to that same amnesiac culture, the city becomes an extended ‘site of forgetting’, an extrapolation of the ‘amnesiac’ program, thus casting the nearby ‘reconstruction’ efforts as larger acts of forgetting of which the club is only a fragment. Hence, the ‘site’ par se becomes essentially a dispersed one, and the two main ‘pieces’ of program becomes truly that, fragments of a larger whole dispersed around the city.

These smaller dispersed residual elements of the program I imagine as a series of urban/landscape elements, flags of sort, pinpointing certain moments in the city center and connecting them to the two larger components of this agenda of remembering and forgetting. One system of these elements I imagine as a series of fissures violating the ground regardless of its archeological layers, and in that way unifying them through a void, and the equating act of violence to which all are subjected. This system of fissures in turn would be a means of connecting the nightclub to the research/archival center, and rooting them both in the larger site. However, these fissures act as well as barriers at times, making the system a metamorphic one that changes from connection elements to ones of separation and back, depending on the position in the site. For example, the ‘fissures’ would become a series of underpasses when they cross the streets of the desolate field of Martyrs’ Square, connecting its multiple isolated islands, created by the streets, together. Conversely, on the islands, the fissures attain an above ground presence, with height depending on the location in the site, creating a physical as well as visual barrier. This barrier, however, registers the passage of time by dissolving, literally. Yet, an insoluble part of it remains, a scar in the site. I imagine these barriers, thus, as assemblies of two disparate materials: a visually opaque one that is nevertheless rather ephemeral, soluble; and a visually permeable one that is however more physically enduring. For example, the ‘barriers’ could be a sandwich of an external enclosure of glass filled with crushed rock salt. Thus, initially both a physical as well as a visual obstacle, with time the filling dissolves, channeled by the system of ‘fissures’ as salt water back to the sea at the north of the site, becoming visually permeable while the glass remains as a physical hindrance.

In terms of size, the new B018 is to be comparable in square footage to its former (present) incarnation, in order to retain the same signature ambience of ‘underground’ intimacy. (That would be about 4,000 sq. ft. for an occupancy of around a hundred seated; that increases appreciably, however, when the ‘standing occupancy’ is considered). The research/archival center has approximately twice the square footage for the same (seated) occupancy (the extra space being needed for media storage). However, since the nightclub is a single (underground) story while the research/archival center is a two- building, the two programmatic components would thus occupy comparable footprints.

B018 IV:
Bouncer’s booth: ~25 sq. ft. (the only ‘above ground’ component)
Lounge: ~1200 sq. ft. (seats ~90 people)
Dance floor: ~250 sq. ft.
Bar: ~500 sq. ft. (seats ~10 people)
Storage: ~500 sq. ft. (about half of which is to be adjacent to the bar, for liquor storage; the rest is for miscellaneous storage)
Manager’s Office: ~100 sq. ft.
Toilets: 2 x ~125 sq. ft.
Service toilet & lockers: ~100 sq. ft.
Vertical circulation: ~300 sq. ft. (Main stair, service stair & emergency stair)
Horizontal circulation: ~600 sq. ft.
Mechanical: ~200 sq. ft.
TOTAL: ~4,000 sq. ft.

War Research/Archival Center:
(In general, the ‘storage spaces’ are to be ‘closed’ isolated environmentally controlled spaces, while the ‘usage spaces’ are to be naturally lit, and visually relating to the city outside.)

Entrance/Lobby/Reception: ~500 sq. ft.
Lockers (at entrance): ~100 sq. ft.
Book shelving: ~1200 sq. ft.
Reading Room: ~600 sq. ft. (seats ~35 people)
Computer Stations: ~600 sq. ft. (seats ~35 people)
Microfilm storage: ~250 sq. ft.
Microfilm viewing stations: ~250 sq. ft. (seats ~5 people)
Microfiche storage: ~250 sq. ft.
Microfiche viewing stations: ~250 sq. ft. (seats ~5 people)
Video storage: ~250 sq. ft.
Video viewing booths: ~250 sq. ft. (seats ~5 people)
Audio storage: ~250 sq. ft.
Audio listening stations: ~250 sq. ft. (seats ~5 people)
Offices: 2 x ~100 sq. ft.
Reproduction room: ~250 sq. ft. (xeroxes, audio/video recorders, etc.)
Toilets: 2 x ~125 sq. ft.
Service spaces (kitchenette, janitors’ closet, etc.): ~100 sq. ft.
Vertical circulation: ~600 sq. ft. (Main stair, service stair & emergency stair)
Horizontal circulation: ~1200 sq. ft.
Mechanical: ~400 sq. ft.
TOTAL: ~8,000 sq. ft.

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