Hybrid
The balance between virtual and actual, physical and cyber, i.e. hybrid, (or cybrid according to Anders) is not a stable condition that, once conceived, is translated in terms of space. The boundaries between the functions, activities or events supported by physical space and those supported by cyberspace are constantly changing position, defining an undetermined region. That same movement transforms the identity and contours of the activities or events involved. Thinking thus the hybrid as a partage between physical and cyber, calls for a virtual/actual abstract machine, a new understanding of the unfolding of multiple events that differ in their interrelations. But to what degree does the library of the information age require a physical or cyber presence? Transformation through time is the new parameter in design. Technology has already established a transitional phase, where physical and cyber coexist to insure the broadening of its potentials. Designers need to create the environments for the evolution to occur. A library is already a hybrid organism with permeate boundaries and superimposition of elements.

Actual
It is one of many potential states of the virtual and never completely reveals all that the virtual implies.
The potential of force becomes at once visible and effective.

Virtual
It comes from the word Virtus, meaning potential or force.
A virtuality does not exist unless conceived by a rational being. When a human interprets or intervenes to an environment, the space is transubstantiated into a virtual environment. Even his presence can act as a medium of transformation. The virtual is a suggestion of form, as one of many possible actualizations. It is a multiple potential that acts without physicality and reveals previously unforeseen connections and relations.