17/02/2026
Reading Together Gender & Space
An Exhibition at the Library
16.02 - 06.03, 2026
Mater Studio: Spatial Practices of Care presents research and design work developed around the spatial history, conditions, and cultures of reading in the library and across the school. It looks at both the formal settings of the library and classrooms and the informal corners, desks, and shared spaces where reading happens, how knowledge is categorised, and where books are stored. This research forms the basis for concrete propositions translated into spatial, editorial, organisational, or performative outcomes that revisit, diversify, repair, annotate, or reimagine the spaces and practices of reading at BAS.
Aymen and Gunhild investigated the spatial history of the library through its many incarnations at BAS, bringing together its development over time with conceptual and thematic anchor points. Their work shows the connection between spaces, concepts, and people, resulting in a complex drawing: part timeline and part diagram.
Enni and Simon explored the library space as an interconnected series of spatial fragments, presenting a model of one fragment that shows its materiality, the connection to the outside, and the most pressing condition of the library: it being overflowed by books, the lack of space, but also the very essence of this space, its joyful messiness.
Anabel and Minh explored how reading takes place within the school, identifying four dimensions that structure reading practices: time, space, habits, and memory. Through filmed interviews they gathered stories and memories of reading and recuperated past practices at BAS such as radio readings, collective sessions, and experimental formats, situating reading within the school’s teaching and learning history.
Mary, Laurine, and Stan listened to 56 people’s personal experiences of the school library and libraries in general by asking three simple questions: What is a library anyway? What book would you suggest for the school library? And what is your first experience in a library? They transformed individual voices into collective narratives. The recordings situate these answers within the everyday spaces, movements, and rhythms of BAS.
Jenna and Enni examined the content and categorisation of the school’s library. The work looks at how information is collected and displayed, how categories are named and organised, and what these structures reveal about the school’s broader culture of knowledge. A game is used as a playful way to approach structures and systems. “The Impossible Library” focuses on the unusual organisation system of the BAS library, navigating the struggle of categorising a diverse selection of books.
Anja and Ymane engaged with the library’s materials related to gender and space, observing what is present and what is absent in the collection. Reading functioned as the primary method of exploration within the class, leading to the collective assembly of a shared reader shaped by students and the teaching team and gathering the conversations unfolding in the studio. The reader remains open to new voices and references and is intended to find its place in the BAS library as part of the ongoing discourse around gender and space.
Students: Anabel Ainso, Anja Riegger, Aymen Khan, Ellen Riechmann, Enni Kallioniemi, Gunhild Korsoen, Jenna Niska, Laurine Schürch, Mary Xu, Minh Ton Simon Dahl, Stanislas Cornevint, Ymane Hage
Teachers: Anders Rubing, Kandis Friesen, Rosario Talevi
