Keystone Magazine Keystone Magazine 5th EN | Page 46

IN CONVERSATION WITH
Keystone Academy has a special good place to
work, a unique wonderland among the many
good workspaces on campus. The High School
Library welcomes its students and every
other visitor through a Chinese-style arched
doorway on the fourth floor of the middle
school building. The red portal transports
you to a wonderland of books, worlds, and
unexpected possibilities in a setting the blends
the traditions, cultures, habits and habitus of
the east and west, which is in line with the
school’s mission and ethos. Hughes explains
the meticulous care that has gone into the
design details, and the passionate commitment
that has enveloped the building of the library
to ensure that it not only enables the framing
of meaning and identity for students in the
present but also continues into their future
Fourth Floor Archway to
paths, wherever that might be. He starts with
the Future
all the practical aspects that went into the
Thanks to Luke Hughes and his team, deliberations, and then moves on to what he
smile, “A lot of people don’t go down this
path because of the fear of failure. I think
failure should be celebrated sometimes
because it is through failure that you find
different ways of thinking. And having a
tramline way of thinking is a tremendous
counterpoint to imagination. Sometimes
you stumble across a book when you were
looking for something else and when you get
used to that and feel comfortable stumbling
across the unexpected. This sows the seeds
of imagination and the art of the possible.
One of the most gratifying things about all
the school libraries we have designed or
redesigned is that each has had a jump in its
rate of usage, and it stayed up because they
have become good places to work.
46 The Keystone Magazine