Lifestyle.INQ features The Book Stop Project in “Oddly-shaped Intramuros Waiting Shed is a Mobile Library”.
AT INTRAMUROS’ plaza Roma in front of the Manila Cathedral is a waiting shed, seemingly out of place as it stands in the middle of a footpath facing the church, blocking pedestrians’ right of way.
But the structure’s location was deliberately chosen precisely because of all the foot traffic. And this is no ordinary waiting shed—it’s a mobile library called “The Book Stop” where one can borrow books and donate old ones already gathering dust at home. The odd fixture’s slanted steel roof and steel shelves are enough to attract random passersby and curious tourists.
In the past month, The Book Stop in Intramuros, Manila, has also attracted a regular crowd of bibliophiles. There are students, mostly from surrounding universities, and—to the delight of its creator, William Ti Jr.—little children who have yet to learn to read, many of them residing in slum communities in the Walled City.
“We have a lot of children’s books. But the children here, they don’t know how to read. They’re just looking at the pictures,” said the 36-year-old architect whose firm, San Juan-based WTA Architecture and Design Studio, put up the mobile library. Intramuros is The Book Stop’s second, well, stop; the first was at the Ayala Triangle Garden in Makati City earlier this year.
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