This project is done in collaboration with research at Cornell Architecture.

In the culinary world, ‘nose-to-tail’ refers to a practice in which the whole animal is used, without discarding the parts that are typically considered waste. In Tripe, the leftovers from the production of 16 stools are used for the storage of books. Additional cuts are made for 7 waterproof book boxes containing over 200 books that circulate around Buffalo’s Riverside neighborhood, as well as slots for the storage of the stools themselves. The cut-outs are registered by a gradient of offset lines translating from one shape to the next, created by the same CNC milling process used to extract the shapes.

Believing that a library is more than just shelves, CODA designed bookcases, seats, and space to read together. The planting boxes extant on the site are echoed in the project, growing red tulips as a bookend to the garden’s productive landscape.

Part reading room, part bookstack, and part stage, Tripe is located in The Esser Street Garden, a community garden at the corner of Esser and Henrietta streets in Riverside, Buffalo, NY. Tripe is a winner of the Buffalo Architecture Foundation’s 2017 Little Free Library competition: http://buffaloarchitecture.org/little-free-library

2018

Project Leader: Alireza Shojakhani

Team: Maria Yue Ma, Mwanzaa Brown, Evan McDowell, Laura-India Garinois, Travis Nissen, Elizabeth Saleh, Hana Svatos-Raznjevic.

With thanks to Kurt Brosnan, Tyler Williams, and Nicholas Mino.

Special thanks to Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning/Department of Architecture; Buffalo Architecture Foundation; Buffalo and Erie County Public Library; WSNHS Buffalo; and Martin Miller (Antistatics).