Architect John Locke presented us with the “DUB 002” as part of his “Department of Urban Betterment” interventionist project. This repurposed phone booth located on the streets of New York City is truly an inspiration to it’s by passers. Locke transformed an old fashioned phone booth into a communal library or book drops, he put bookshelves within the structure and filled it with books for residents to take, borrow or exchange as they please. He explained the purpose of this project by saying “Even as they are rendered obsolete by the ubiquity of smartphones, I’m interested in pay phones because they are both anachronistic and quotidian. Relics, they’re dead technology perched on the edge of obsolescence, a skeuomorph hearkening back to a lost shared public space we might no longer have any use for…. it can also be a place of opportunity, something to reprogram and somewhere to come together and share a good book with your neighbors.”
