Reading into the needs of the community has paid off for Bankstown City Council, with 92% more people now visiting its award-winning, $22 million Library and Knowledge Centre.
The Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre (BLaKC) was opened in April 2014, following seven years of planning and construction.
The design brief for the project was not just to create somewhere to house books – Manager of City Planning James Carey says the centre needed to provide Bankstown, one of the most multicultural local government areas in Australia, with a central community hub.
“Council needed it to create a heart for the city, a place where people meet and share common experiences,” Carey says.
“Community hubs are key to growing and diverse communities by providing a platform where to meet and shared experiences. The BLaKC is not just a repository for books but a state-of-the-art community hub which plays a significant role within the Bankstown civic precinct.”
The project is not all shiny and new – in a nod to the area’s history, the existing town hall was incorporated into the design.
“During the concept design phase, two options emerged in response to the brief: an adaptive reuse of the existing building or a complete demolish and rebuild,” Carey says.
“After analysing the associated risks and benefits a third option became apparent – a hybrid approach. Adopting this approach led to the existing building being sensitively modified with salvaged materials and realigned to meet new requirements.
“The existing auditorium and related podium were demolished and the new library volume shifted forward. To define the public domain and create a sense of place within the podium forecourt, the southern line of the existing building line was expanded.”
The BLaKC combines a library with a community meeting place, a cafe, IT labs and a 300-seat theatre. Within the interior, two architecturally-stunning “trees” soar up to the ceiling, while the book stacks have been integrated into the building to create quite spaces.
A major design feature of the building is a green wall installation, which acts as a bio-filter.
Carey says sustainability was at the forefront of the design brief, with the BLaKC’s total energy use intensity approximately 42% less than that of an average public building in Sydney.
“Building excellence does not stop when a building is handed over,” he says. “The council allocated a significant portion of the project budget to incorporating environmental initiatives above and beyond the norm, such as a geothermal heat exchanger, an air tempering ‘thermal labyrinth’, photovoltaic array, high performance facade, green wall bio-filter, rainwater re-use and water recycling.
“During the past 12 months the monitoring results of the total and comparative energy intensity for the BLaKC have been assessed against local and international benchmarks. The building performs extremely well in terms of energy usage relative to comparable public buildings.”
Carey says patronage at the new facility has increased dramatically.
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“In the month following its opening, 47,610 visited, an increase of 76% from the same month the year before, in April 2013,” he explains.
“A year later – April 2015 – the average monthly visitation reached 58,135 visitors, an increase of 92% from the 2013/2014 period.
“Council has welcomed more than 7200 new members since the opening, with a further 4455 joining Council’s other
library services. Word spread quickly and total membership for all our Library and Knowledge Centres has grown to 70,079 – this is an increase of 64% for the same period.
“Bankstown library is no longer the traditional secluded and quiet building, but a vital heart of interaction and activity, serving the people of our city and surrounding areas.”
It is not just the community that is voting with its feet in favour of the project – it has also scooped up multiple awards.
It won Public Works Project of the Year at the IPWEA NSW Division 2015 Engineering Excellence Awards in October, with Division CEO John Roydhouse praising the design and construction of the project.
“The construction of the Library and Knowledge Centre has transformed Bankstown’s civic precinct into a vibrant hub for the community, and is a perfect example of how local government engineers can invigorate their communities,” Roydhouse says.
The BLaKC also earned architects Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp top gong in the interior architecture category at the 2015 National Architecture Awards.