Storefront Library: Department of Micro-Urbanism

The Storefront Library is a temporary public library for a community in Boston which has been without its own branch of the Boston Public Library since it was closed and demolished as part of the Central Artery construction in 1956.  DMU (is a co-collaborator of this project) sees this project as a way to increase the visibility of a distinctive Boston neighborhood and help sustain the vitality of a community which culturally serves not only Boston but the greater New England area. Fall 2009-2010

The Department of Micro-Urbanism [Marrikka Trotter and Jonathan Santos, co-founders] is an art and design initiative aimed at mapping terrains, discovering relationships, addressing issues and exploiting opportunities at the pedestrian urban scale. The initiative’s mission is to expand the space of possibility for agonistic public action, interaction and involvement by initiating, supporting, and realizing creative interventions in the everyday landscape and by increasing public understanding and appreciation of the historical and contemporary political, infrastructural, and socio-economic flows and forces which shape this common terrain.  While participants for each project vary, the Department of Micro-Urbanism draws from a loose network of artists, designers, architects, community leaders and individuals who share the desire to reinforce public space, rethink and extend the possible, and engender and engage in alternative tactics of practice.