The Surry Hills Library and Community Centre designed by Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp (fjmt) has been honoured at the recent Australian Institute of Architects’ 2010 NSW Architecture Awards.
The project was the most awarded on the night, taking out the Milo Dunphy Award for Sustainable Architecture, the John Verge Award for Interior Architecture and the Architecture Award for Public Buildings.
The jury said: "The Surry Hills Library and Community Centre delivers a wide range of services, including a community library, childcare centre and meeting spaces over four floors on a modest footprint.
"Overall, the building presents as a finely crafted piece of joinery, magnified to sit comfortably within the scale of the public domain. The jury was impressed with the project’s commitment to sustainability and the elegant way many of the initiatives have been integrated from first principles into the building form and its operation.
"Surry Hills Library and Community Centre is a confident and considered piece of civic architecture. The building has been warmly embraced by the local community and the client and the architect are to be commended for their commitment to delivering an exemplary outcome that eschews conventional notions of contemporary public architecture for local communities."
The project extends sustainable design practice to new levels of architectural integration. An aspect of this is what can be called 'bio-mimicry'.
The way the interiors breathe, adjust to invite natural light and through the literal integration of plant life, not only as an integral element of the interior spatial aesthetic, but also as a central part of the environmental control and enhancement of these spaces.
