Following 10 years of teaching liberal studies courses at an art college in Canada as well as producing theoretical papers on the issues of unsustainability and the future, I made the decision to retire. One of the first things I thought to do was to volunteer as a tour guide for the new Calgary Central Library. It was designed by the Norwegian firm Snøhetta, and opened in November of 2018. It is an extraordinary building, I started to give tours there as a volunteer in the Fall of 2019.

One of the concepts I explored in my academic research was concerned with the designing effects of design. Our species, homo sapiens, designs artifacts of all sorts. These artifacts design a world which designs us in turn, and becomes the world that the next generation is born into, creating new ways of being in the world, shaping human history. This is how design designs.

We design and build public libraries for various reasons—but in the end, what we are designing is a civic culture.

I gave tours at the library from September 2019 until the coronavirus pandemic began its unprecedented spread in Calgary beginning in early March 2020. These tours were based on a general model for all guides, leading interested visitors from the archway at the entrance, through the building and up to the fourth floor. I spent quite a bit of time at the library doing this, watching people work, browse and interact.

I started a new photographic project to explore how the Calgary Central Library is designing civic culture. I spent quite a lot of time through the Fall and Winter before or after my tours or on other occasions wandering around and photographing. I have organized the images to be commensurate with the way I gave my standard tour—beginning under the Great Arch just outside the entrance, and proceeding from the first floor lobby up to the fourth floor.