Highlights
BIA (Hons.)
Competitions
Illustrations
Making
Benita Chen
Interior Designer
NYC
A Learning Machine: The Library of Experiences
Phil Freelon Design Competition 2024, Team: Benita Chen, Dreama Lin, Zhen LiThe 2-day competition challenged teams to anticipate the socio-cultural changes that lie ahead and re-imagine how civic spaces might transform, using the San Francisco public library as a lens.Project teams were challenged to propose a variety of futuristic design solutions that address important issues such as civic connection, adaptive and renewable thinking, emerging technologies, and information access.
Our proposed library typology operates as an evolving learning machine, continually expanding its open-source database and generating experiences and knowledge. Through tailored, immersive experiences, it rekindles human connections using cyber and reality technologies to address the degradation of community in San Francisco and worldwide.