first attempt at mapping.

albury library.

"before designing, the architects drove around the city to photograph and collect local 'roadkill' (their word), or spatial features and forms associated with Albury, Victoria, and its history, and sought to integrate them into the new cultural precinct. The Murray River is the salient theme which ties the building together, and the X forms of the building's striking façade were generated by mapping the structure of a decommissioned rail bridge which crosses that river onto a cylinder, and then flattening it out.

The building has a roughly L-shaped form, with the library and museum forming two wings which join at a double height foyer, a spacious hub which makes the museum and library appear like coves, or railway cabins. The site is already an established civic precinct, which the museum addresses on multiple sides with glazed walls sheltered by the X forms of the façade. The conjoined programs of the library and museum means that one body can oversea the collection of Albury's cultural assets, and children reading in the glazed 'nooks' of the junior library, designed to child scale, are free to wander into exhibitions at the museum. The permanent exhibition in the museum, Crossing Place, features artifacts and information which, like ARM's 'roadkill', is a curious gallery of local found objects. Exhibits include the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, photographed by Anne Zahalka, and Gerhard Ziermann's 1981 matchstick art of the Hume Dall Wall.

The building's setbacks are discontinuous, and its variable façade treatments highlight the dual program of the interior. In places, the steel fascia pulls back into the building to leave a void where trees are planted, creating nooks like those formed by the winding shape of tree-lined levees. The civic centre is and was intended to be a local icon. The X forms of the Kiewa façade are a signpost of sorts, in addition to an allusion to the local bridge and railway - in ARM's words, "XXXX marks the spot".

http://www.specifier.com.au/pastissues/48852/Albury-Library-Museum.html

Our architectural vision for the building was to bring together reminiscences and almost familiar elements from the Albury region; the giant webbing of the railway bridge over the Murray, the banks, levees and trees of the surrounding landscape, the river course itself, the streetscape of the Civic precinct, the coved cornices of a railway carriage, even the types of materials that one sees on the buildings in Albury. The scale of the building responds to its civic significance and draws from the adjacent existing street facades. All this is the palate through which we created the building. It has been a remarkable journey for us to share with the Council, the staff at the Library and Museum and the community in the creation of this project. Our team, along with Irwinconsult, our local partner Kevin Poyner Architect, and Zauner Constructions are pleased to have been part of what is a very important civic asset in Albury.

http://www.architecture.com.au/awards_search?option=showaward&entryno=2008036171

castle hill library.

seattle public library.