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King Street Library, Newtown

Part 1 Project 2003
Julien Gouiric
 University of Sydney | Australia
Traditionally, libraries are destinations that ask visitors to leave behind the outside world and enter into an enclosed environment purely for information. However, in today’s society information is becoming closely interwoven with daily life and nowhere is this more apparent than in the bohemian quarter of Newtown, Sydney. A hive of political and cultural publications, serials written by local authors, street art and internet cafes, all interacting with its main street – King street – and its many cafes and gathering spots.

This project seeks to design a library on King Street that doesn’t presume to capture or enclose the creative energy of Newtown but instead to funnel it, acting as a hub and a place to stop while travelling from A to B.

The western façade has been peeled away, creating an atrium that acts as an internal street, meandering through a scattering of spaces given over to reading, exhibitions, computers or socialising. While the façade now becomes an urban backdrop, the atrium is a void that allows the environmental contrasts of the outside environment into the library. Moving around the building becomes a play of ever shifting glare and shadow, noise and peace, safety and vertigo, suggesting a sense of fluidity and change.


Public Libraries are something of an anachronism in contemporary media society. Are they Temples of Knowledge? Places to Rest your Feet after shopping? In the 'hip' tattoo-ed, nose-pierced ambience of inner-city Newtown, what role can they play? Can they be relevant? Julien Gouric's design confronts the issues with a complex respose that turns the building inside-out, forming a street-scale space cut across by steel-plate bridge- like 'reading rooms' that give internal spaces of intimacy and refined proportions, while giving a sense of incongruity and the incidental that reflects the street-culture of the town. The project is site-specific, resolving the awkwardness of an unpromising site, and 'real' - the physical characteristics and qualities of the assemblage are specific. The design brilliantly examines the fundamental issue of the changing meaning of our cultural inheritances across generations.
2003
King Street Library, Newtown, Sydney
Raw, rough, noisy, smelly and wonderfully vibrant Newtown, where Graffiti is an art and McDonalds opened, but had to close within months because of lack of interest. The people of Newtown will only accept what they, as a community, can own or create.
The western façade becomes a independent object that slices through the streetscape, creating an internal pedestrian street to parallel its traffic filled twin outside.
A preliminary study where we were asked to design a reading room for ourselves. I decided that the room should become an object to that can interact with its existing spaces, becoming a central tool in all activities rather than a separate room.
As the street flows into the building causing the atrium of the building itself to become public domain, the book related spaces become almost sculptural objects along the path, worth detours or visits of a few minutes or a few hours.
The atrium fills all four storeys, allowing the sense of public possession to move vertically as well as horizontally, allowing bridge like reading rooms to both pierce the space but also allow viewing points from above.
With just as much force as the western wall, the ceiling and eastern wall slope inwards, reflecting movement into the building and blending the internal street with its external counterparts; the numerous awnings that create the Newtown street scape.
The bridge like reading rooms allow for the paradox of giving the most intimate spaces but also continuing the fluidity and journey by providing the only means to see through the western wall to the world beyond.
Details and careful construction is essential; the bridges had to feel like they were penetrating, not stopping and starting. Made of Corten, they contrast with the sterilty and smooth lines of the concrete, steel and glass.
The building continues the ideas of fluidity throughout the building with its constant changes in light and experiences. Natural versus artificial light, glare and shadows versus monotony, safety and intimacy versus vertigo and monumentality.
Let the building age! Any clean, new, pristine building will be rejected at first by Newtown, so let the western façade become a writing block for time and the inhabitants of Newtown to write upon.
Both entrances consist of glazed doors that may open completely to provide absolute fluidity, while the sloping ceiling and eastern wall will provide a screen for projected artworks and movies.
By entering into the internal street the sounds, sights and smells of Newtown are not instantly lost but instead follow the user at all times, either more or less distant, but always present.
Selecting their book from the eastern rooms, a user may be drawn by the light into the bridges, journeying across with their book towards their window upon the outside world.
The moveable book boxes, holding low security publications such as a news papers and magazines. Both sculptural, independent items and a way of giving trust to the library users.
It was important that the roof of the atrium had the same simplicity and brutality that was apparent in the western wall. The beams were exposed and glass structure was kept minimal.
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