Building Memories

About this event

Library: Central Library Location: Central Library Event Kind: Ongoing Category: Art & Exhibits Audience: Babies,Children,Tweens,Teens,Adults,Seniors Registration Required: No Descr iption: In 2025, with the centennial celebration of the Linn-Henley Research Library on the horizon, the Archives department of the Birmingham Public Library invited Auburn's Interior Architecture Program to turn its creative lens toward the home of those treasured resources. The challenge: to imagine what the next chapter of this historic institution might look like.This exhibition celebrates that collaboration and the transformative ideas that emerged from it. Students were invited to reimagine the third floor of the Linn-Henley Library as a Community Memory Lab and expanded Archives-a space where preservation and participation, scholarship and storytelling, history and contemporary life could intersect.Drawing inspiration from the Archives' collections and the layered histories held within them, the students' proposals explore how physical space can become an active vessel for memory. Their designs ask us to consider not only how we preserve the past, but how we create spaces that invite communities to discover, contribute to, and shape their ow n histories.The resulting work is both a design study and an act of imagination: a glimpse into how the Archives might evolve as a living, accessible, and creative center for collective memory. Event Type: Art & Exhibits

In 2025, with the centennial celebration of the Linn-Henley Research Library on the horizon, the Archives department of the Birmingham Public Library invited Auburn's Interior Architectu re Program to turn its creative lens toward the home of those treasured resources. The challenge: to imagine what the next chapter of this historic institution might look like.

This exhibition celebrates that collaboration and the transformative ideas that emerged from it. Students were invited to reimagine the third floor of the Linn-Henley Library as a Community Memory Lab and expanded Archives-a space where pres ervation and participation, scholarship and storytelling, history and contemporary life could intersect.

Drawing inspiration from the Archives' collections and the layered histories held within them, the students' proposals explore how physical space can become an active vessel for memory. Their designs ask us to consider not only how we preserve the past, but how we create spaces that invite communities to discover, contribute to, and shape their own histories. The res ulting work is both a design study and an act of imagination: a glimpse into how the Archives might evolve as a living, accessible, and creati ve center for collective memory.