 | FORMAL PLAY, CIVIC DECORUM Pure geometries, public spirit and sustainable concerns are woven together with wit and dexterity in the Redcliffe City
Library and Gallery. Review by Douglas Neale.
Photography by Richard Stringer.
| Review |
The north-western edge of Moreton Bay is a complex estuarine confluence
of Hays Inlet, Fresh Water Creek and the Pine River, including the Tnchi Tamba
Wetlands Reserve, which drains into Bramble Bay. Stretching across the face of this
extraordinary land/seascape are the low slung, doppelganger decks of the
Hornibrook (now a fisherman’s viaduct) and Houghton highways. More like a pair
of curious jetties than bridges, they connect the bay suburbs of Brisbane to the
Redcliffe Peninsula.
The location of the original colonial settlement in Queensland in 1824, this
peninsula is made of a chain of russet-coloured rocky bluffs or small cliffs from which
it gets its name and through which the Redcliffe City Council seeks to promote itself.
This dual connection to setting – both topographic and symbolic – served as one
of the primary design sources for the new Redcliffe City Library and Art Gallery by
the Queensland Department of Public Work’s Project Services team, led by
design architect Don Watson and project architect and manager Don Hewitt.
Completed in 2000, the facility has become Queensland’s second most visited/used
public building.
After a successful bidding process, the initial ocean-facing site proved unsuitable.
A new site opposite the showgrounds on busy Oxley Avenue was identified. Brief
requirements were reformulated to include a regional library, a toy library, an art
gallery, a local history unit, community meeting rooms, administration, and storage
facilities. Sustainable design principles, established at this point, were seen as an
appropriate ingredient in the design of a key civic building.
Oxley Avenue is the main city artery. It runs north-south along the length of the
peninsula, stitching a seam between a later, larger, mostly suburban development and
the earlier coastal layout, whose more complex pattern of streets and blocks bend
and turn against the small bluffs that make up a quite pretty and contained coastal edge. Oxley Avenue has all the usual small-city, main street functions of
supermarkets and service industry developments, with their conglomeration of loose-fit
parking and other street edge disruptions. Additional community facilities grouped
within this setting include schools, the fire station, sporting centres and several
churches. Placing the library and gallery complex along this spine symbolically and
physically locates it within the “heart” of the community, rather than as a privileged
ornament along the sea edge. This spirit of serving community needs, and a belief in
the importance of public architecture in regional centres, provides the framework for
other more sophisticated design considerations.
Geometric devices and the building’s programmatic organisation inform the site
planning and set up the overall formal parti. The entry, located on Oxley Avenue to
lend civic presence, is articulated as an object in the streetscape. An exuberant set of
“shopfronts” gather around it, identifying the building’s functions – including that of
rainwater collection (celebrated by the use of large stainless steel spitters and a
symbolic “creek”). These spitters also help to break up glare from the west into the
generous foyer space and community meeting rooms. The library itself is a large,
structure-free volume, supported by long-span, cable-stay trusses. These allow the
shaded south wall to evenly distribute diffuse daylight throughout the space. Reading
decks and staff facilities are located to the east and north with carparking
underneath, making use of falls across the site.
The exploration of the deployment of pure geometric forms is an ongoing theme in
Don Watson’s work. At Redcliffe, circle and diamond are formally counterposed
against the larger square of the library plan. Plan, section, elevation, and the elegant
and witty joinery by Gerard Murtagh use a repetitive Pythagorean angular geometry
(13:84:85) to coordinate all the layers of detail. Perforated plywood desks are toothed
and sized to bricks in the manner of non-orthogonal masonry joints while maintaining a dialogue with the linings of the coffered foyer ceiling skylights. From book stack and
carpet layout to overall form, these geometrical devices are orchestrated with the
expressed intention of controlling and articulating the building fabric.
The building fabric itself is elaborated through sustainable design considerations.
Maximum advantage is taken of natural light and ventilation. The flanking walls of the
library are composed of a grid of proprietary screened louvres at high and low level,
modified for acoustic and sun control, with book stacks in between. Automatic
sensors adjust to external changes of sun angle, wind speed, and rain. Fan-only plant
and a sub-floor ducted displacement system augment natural ventilation.
Small reading alcoves are used figuratively, as in the Staff Room, or as a means
of relieving the scale of the large space and, simultaneously, giving it a strong
presence. These intimate alcoves bring the library whimsically back to the scale of
the individual while also providing views in and out. Externally the pleated alcove
roofs possess a kind of metaphorical kinetic stasis – with a press of a button one
could well believe they would shut with a lingering pneumatic hiss! Other metaphors
proliferate. The red brick entry facades, carefully balanced either side, identify the key
components of library and gallery but also evoke open book covers around its circular
spine. The subtle combination of red brick and skillion reiterate the form of the
coastline. The audacious cowl over the Staff Room at the northern end and the reading
alcoves “read” as dog-eared reference tags or bookmarks.
These metaphorical, experiential devices overlay the geometric play and
sustainable concerns with a keenly felt sense of civic decorum. The building is
reminiscent of public architecture in regional Queensland of the 1950s – an era,
seemingly lost, when public buildings contributed significantly to a civic order and a
sense of occasion. The Redcliffe Library and Gallery continues this tradition,
providing a joyous public room for the whole community but one that retains its
own poise and charm.
Doug Neale is an architect and lecturer in architecture at the University of Queensland.
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| Project Credits |
Redcliffe Library and Gallery.
Architect Project Services—design architect
Don Watson; project architect and project manager
Don Hewitt; project team Anthony Job, Brendan
Robertson, Kev Scully, Scott Chrichton, Bob
Johnson, Ivor Thomas, Stephen Milton. Specialist
Joinery Gerard Murtagh. Structural/Civil Engineers
Arup. Mechanical/Electrical Engineers Bassett.
Day-lighting Ian Edmonds, QUT. Signage Terry
Murphy Design. Acoustics Ron Rumble. Artists
Hew Chee Fong and Loretta Noonan. Contractor
McMaster (Qld).
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