The relationship between a person’s everyday and their environment is reciprocal. They shape and are shaped by each other. So, architects, as shapers of extrapersonal environments must design in response to others’ everydays. In doing so, the architect uses their agency as a designer to create situations which can allow the agency of the inhabitants to come into the foreground.

 

    In urban environments, the everyday is sited the sidewalk, where the building meets the street. The facade is the interstitial space which defines this dichotomy, interfacing as the visual and figural obstacle between the Private of the building and the Public of the street. If this idea of the facade were a building, it would be the Public Library. Proving itself to be even more than a place to house books and worlds, the library has undergone an extensive increase in service over the years to keep up with public need and demand. So, too, should the public face of the building envelope increase its services for the people who are already using it in unintended and creative ways.

 

    Though it speaks as the face of whatever institution is behind it, the facade can also be a place of shelter, work, or play for the people on its other side. Since the facade rests in those two primary contexts, its design should be responsive to both. In that, the architect must wear the wig of the Private, so that the needs of the Public can also be met. Through this act, the architecture of the institution and building can be extended through its own envelope toward the movement of, and occupancy by, bodies on the street.

   

    

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