BY THE BOOK
Rethinking the way we design and use libraries has converted them into all-important cultural, economic and social hubs.
WHEN I LEFT a full-time job to go freelance several years ago, I began working from my local public library. Every weekday morning, I would queue outside Surry Hills Library on bustling Crown Street in Sydney. At precisely 10am I joined the stream of gig-economy workers coursing through the doors beneath a green wall of plants and a spectacular atrium made up of a series of glass prisms. But admiring the architecture of the Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp-designed building wasn’t my priority: my mission was to secure one of the precious powerpoints at the street-side desks with views onto the adjacent park, for which demand far exceeded supply.
“People today are not just reading books in [libraries], but running businesses, creating products, making music and holding meetings,” says Stewart Architecture director Felicity Stewart, whose firm designed Sydney’s Green Square Library in association with Stewart Hollenstein.
“In an increasingly secular society, the library is replacing the church as a community gathering space that offers a non-commercial alternative to other places such as shopping malls,” she adds. “In a library you can be a citizen, be a creator and be social without having to be a customer.”
Libraries today are hot property. Far from dusty, they are edgy and conceptual spaces attracting top design talent and technology, with amenities ranging from rooftop gardens and communal kitchens to recording studios and 3D printers. As the trend to small-space living continues apace, libraries have become crucial Third Spaces that offer world-class facilities designed to foster connection and community in an increasingly isolated and fragmented society.
“Libraries have become urban living rooms,” says City of Sydney deputy lord mayor Jess Scully. “They are now designed to accommodate a much stronger social offering beyond simply a space to sit and read or study, and they need to be flexible enough for multiple uses and multiple age groups.”
When Green Square Library opened in 2018, it included an openair amphitheatre, a subterranean garden, a music room with a baby grand piano, a computer lab and a six-storey glass tower – a beacon for the 50,000 residents of one of Sydney’s fastest growing urban areas.
“Green Square presented an opportunity to carve out an entire new town centre and putting the library at the heart of it provided a setting to ask designers to rethink what a library could be in the most open and exciting way,” says Felicity.
Darling Square Library opened the next year in Sydney’s Haymarket, a timber ribbon-wrapped building conceived by Japanese architects Kengo Kuma & Associates. Founder Kengo Kuma designed the National Stadium for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. For the Darling Square Library, his first Australian commission, he employed more
Admont Abbey in Austria contains the largest monastic library in the world, as well as a scientific collection. State
Library Victoria in Melbourne, Australia’s oldest public library, had a $88 million refurbishment last year. The nine-floor Stuttgart City Library in Germany was unveiled in 2011 with study rooms, cafe, roof terrace and event space for 300. Green Square Library’s subterranean garden and
its glass facade.
where people could exchange ideas in a space that belonged to them and was always evolving.”
To that end, architect Yan-Yan Ho used an origami metaphor to create a flexible system incorporating modular furniture and folding walls that could respond to different needs and changing times.
When Donovan Hill + Peddle Thorp Architects redeveloped the State Library of Queensland in 2006, the task was epic. The existing space was dramatically expanded to comprise a 25,000sqm facility within the Cultural Centre precinct, which also includes the Queensland Art Gallery, the Museum and the Gallery of Modern Art.
“[A library must be] an accessible place, a constantly transforming place, a virtual place, a place of interactions, a place with atmosphere and importantly, a voice in its place,” says BVN practice director Damian Eckersley, who worked on the library with Donovan Hill.
“There is something about working with public space that is very enjoyable – it might have to do with the sense of satisfaction gained from a commission that will contribute to the city and the public good in the greatest possible way,” says Damian.
The private sector is also now recognising libraries as a way to add value and increase turnover. Many hotels are reviving the hotel library, a part of their offering once thought defunct, which makes sense given the library is a surprising presence in many younger consumers’ lives. Pew Research Center in the US reports that millennials are the most likely to use such institutions, while digitally fatigued generation Z is driving a publishing renaissance, according to 2016 research by Nielsen.
One example is the University Arms hotel in the UK’s Cambridge, which recently reopened after a $156 million refurbishment inspired by the city’s literary connections. All rooms contain a selection of books and each suite is named after a famous author who attended the nearby university. In Madrid, the Gran Hotel Inglés employed Spanish publisher Zenda to curate a 600-title collection for the property’s public spaces and dedicated Literary Lounge, while in China architecture studio Atelier Tao+C has created a capsule hotel in Zhejiang Province specifically for travellers who want to read. Bamboo bookshelves feature throughout the triple-height atrium that doubles as a library and nooks provide spots for guests to page through novels.
In 2017, EasyJet launched an onboard library of children’s books, playfully called Flybraries, on 300 aircraft serving 20 million passengers across Europe, and there are dedicated libraries in Dubai and Amsterdam airports. Wherever you are, the browser extension Library Extension encourages people to borrow books from their local library rather than shopping on Amazon, by popping up when users are browsing online bookstores to show the availability of books in nearby libraries.
Cox Architecture design director Patrick Ness, who worked on the City Library in Melbourne, explains that it’s all part of catapulting the enduring appeal of the library into the future. “At a public level, [libraries] are symbolic of what it is to be a citizen and to engage with knowledge and civic life.”
Tianjin Binhai Library in China has space on its terraced shelves for 1.2 million books. In Dublin, Trinity College’s Old Library, opened in 1732, holds world-famous medieval manuscript the Book of Kells. The Reading Room in Bryant Park, New York, offers an alfresco library. Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos is nicknamed Megabiblioteca for its size and is set in a lush botanical garden. The Toyo Ito-designed Tama Art University Library in Tokyo uses arches to let in natural
light and gently create zones.