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Signature Series: The Role of Libraries within the Public Realm

Greenwich Library’s Signature Series is pleased to present a fascinating conversation about the role of libraries within the public realm. Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design will be joined by Eric Klinenberg, bestselling author, renowned sociologist, and Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

Klinenberg's book Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life argues that social infrastructure, “the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact,” are the key to building a democracy that works for everyone. Our ability to live and work together depends on rebuilding our libraries, parks, churches and schools—all the places that strangers and familiars alike mingle and cross paths. 

Whiting’s research and writing is broadly interdisciplinary, with the built environment at its core. An expert in architectural theory and urbanism, she has a particular interest in modern and contemporary architecture’s relationship with politics, economics, and society and how the built environment shapes the nature of public life. Whiting will walk us through three examples as markers of three moments/approaches: Tom Beeby’s Harold Washington Library in Chicago (1991), OMA’s Seattle Public Library (2004), and Mecanoo’s renovation of the NYPL Niarchos branch (2021).

Copies of Palaces for the People and 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed will be available for sale and signing after the program.  Books provided by Diane's Books.

This program will be recorded and posted on the Library's YouTube channel.

Date:
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Time:
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location:
Berkley Theater
Audience:
  Adult  
Categories:
  Lecture and Conversation  
Registration has closed.

Sarah Whiting has been Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 2019. She is also a design principal and co-founder of WW Architecture, based in Cambridge, and previously served as the Dean of Rice University's School of Architecture. Whiting received an interdisciplinary, self-directed Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale, a Master of Architecture from Princeton, and a Doctor of Philosophy in the History and Theory of Architecture from MIT.

Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of many books, most recently 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed and Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018), as well as the editor of Cultural Production in a Digital Age, co-editor of Antidemocracy in America (Columbia University Press, 2019), and co-author, with Aziz Ansari, of the New York Times #1 bestseller Modern Romance (The Penguin Press, 2015). His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and This American Life.

Greenwich Library's Signature Series offers dynamic, exceptional public programming that engages the Greenwich community and region, featuring nationally recognized experts for timely analysis and conversations that promote an exchange of ideas. This series is presented by the Greenwich Library Board of Trustees and made possible by charitable contributions from our community.