If you’ve ventured to Victoria’s second biggest city in the last couple of years, you may have sighted a new eye-catching presence on the skyline. This building is a library full of color and impressive modern interior design and it is busy community gathering place and techno-resource centre for residents of one of Australia’s fastest growing regional cities.

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The new eight-level Geelong Library and Heritage Centre occupy the same footprint as the former two-story library it replaces. Three conceptual challenges sparked the design.

We wanted to celebrate the tradition of great libraries, create an ambitious, future-oriented building, and design an organic structure that lets the natural world penetrate the interior.

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The building inhabits both the past and the future. Its form pays homage to the ideals of self-improvement, knowledge, and curiosity expressed in the domes of great reading rooms such as the State Library of Victoria.

But the eroded sphere also conjures a future that is innovative and high-tech.

The building is open to all these historic influences, including the heritage-listed fastigiate Monterey Cypress trees. We cut away part of the dome to extend the park into the building, a reference to ideas of gardens of learning and to the picturesque early Australian tradition of the beautiful ruin.

The digital revolution means computers are replacing books in many libraries around the world but the design reinvigorates engagement with the book as a beautiful, tactile object. The six-metre-high Great Wall of Stories stretches from floor to ceiling in the ground floor. Readers can browse the books from an elevated catwalk, reminiscent of the one at Sydney’s old Mitchell Library.

The crystalline glass shards of the west- and south-facing walls are like stalactites at the entrance of a cave. They recall the Renaissance tradition of the grotto as a primal space of retreat and reflection but the structural glazing of the façades—with both vision glass and shadow boxes—gives them the highest possible thermal rating. The design adds many boughs to the Geelong library: every floor looks onto the trees.

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