Sanctuary of Narratives

Daniel Lee

Project Brief

The proposal is called the Sanctuary of Narrative. It is a multi-media archive of San Francisco that functions as an educational facility for the local junior high and high school students and visiting humanities researchers. The primary purpose of the project is to offer a space of heuristic questioning, searching, and learning in an open and translucent field of information.

The Sanctuary of Narratives is an extension of local schools that houses a community of scholars who acknowledge the significance of youth development and methods of information-searching. It is where the youths are encouraged to question, challenge, search, record, and discuss about their families, schools, sexualities, churches, childhoods, adulthoods, and identities. It is a labyrinthian apparatus that curates, stores, produces knowledge and narratives that serve the curious next generation.

Architectural Description

Sanctuary of Narrative is located in Fillmore St. and Golden Gate Ave. where a historically preserved power substation, a mini-urban park, and a fast-food restaurant are placed. Using the existing preservation as a new entrance and an activated retail-filled corridor, the visitors are led to an open field of bright space and curated archives where the students exhibit their learning outcomes.

The upper levels serve various different archival programs and field of archives that are comprised of 12’x12’ grid-based modules. The modules act individually and collectively, depending on suggested activities such as individual learning, researching, discussing in groups, watching multi-media projections, or seeing curated objects. The archival programs are nested within the dissolved field of information and activities.