Modulverantwortung: Heike Biechteler
Lehrteam: Heike Biechteler, Lothar Schmitt

Libraries as Institutions for the Commons
The Keynote Lectures are a workshop-based, discursive laboratory, reflecting on contemporary societal and spatial matters. By including experts from various backgrounds and disciplines, the course aims to illuminate one topic from different vantage points.This semester’s workshop cycle will continue to focus on the questions of how we can live together as a society in the future and how we can find alternative forms of common ground.
We will examine how the typologies of this public institution, which is among the oldest in the world, embody not only a place of knowledge but also a public meeting point, until now free and without any fees, can develop in the future. With the example of the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich, which is focusing mainly on the humanities, we will furthermore analyse how libraries are structured, organised, designed and programmed as indispensable places for the society as such. In a second step we will develop future scenarios that not only consider the challenges libraries are facing at the moment, such as the digitisation and the apparent need to curate quality knowledge and information, but also understand libraries as essential and potential role models that represent an integral public entity for the common good.