The iconic brutalist-style Dee Why Library, designed by Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners and completed in 1966, will celebrate its 50th birthday on 19 November 2016.
Situated in Dee Why, a northern Sydney suburb located about 18 kilometres northeast of the CBD, the project was led by Colin Madigan, who also designed the National Gallery of Australia, and was completed in 1982.
The Dee Why Library designed by Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners. (Photographed in 1966.)
Image: Harry Sowden
The heritage-listed building was “the first purpose-built library in the Northern Beaches” and “one of the most modern local libraries of its time,” said historian Keith Amos.
Australia’s only Pritzker Prize Laureate Glenn Murcutt said the “marvellous” Madigan-designed library had been a great influence on him.
“I used to go out there on weekdays and weekends and just stand in the space and look at the incredible light. From the delicacy of the steel detailing to the refuge created by the solid wall, it taught me a lot, that building,” Murcutt told the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2004.
“I could not believe the beauty held by the steelwork that contrasted with the perimeter brickwork, it was delicate and superbly detailed,” Murcutt told ArchitectureAU.
He continued: “This building gave me real architecture. It encouraged me to work with small steel elements that established amazing delicacy in detailing.”
The library received the Sir John Sulman Medal in 1966 from the NSW chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. The jury said, “The Library […] blends admirably with the surrounding sandstone outcrops and buildings.”
“A fine choice of materials – base walls and ramps of manganese brick and wall cladding of exposed aggregate precast concrete panels, together with the copper roofs, help to achieve an excellent relationship of building to site.”
An interior view of the Dee Why Library (Photographed in 1966.)
Image: Harry Sowden
Angelo Candalepas, founder of Candalepas Associates, assisted Madigan at Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs when he was an apprentice architect.
Candalepas said the Dee Why Library, together with the Warringah Civic Centre (designed by Madigan and Christopher Kringas and built in 1973), form one of the only modernist urban projects in Australia.
“It is very clear to me that [the project was] the testing ground for Col Madigan’s later work, the National Gallery of Australia. The connection between the National Gallery of Australia and the High Court in Canberra’s Parliamentary Triangle shows evidence of germination in Warringah,” Candalepas said.
He continued: “The interior experiences are spiritual. They offer a dimension that can only be explained as the singular most meaningful offering of architecture, the offering of quietness, which is an offering that provides subtlety and awe when one is able to consider how sunlight may touch and shape those things we are able to make as humans.”
The facade of Dee Why Library designed by Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners. (Photographed in 1966.)
Image: Harry Sowden
Madigan received the RAIA Gold Medal in 1981. In her reflection on this accolade, architectural historian Jennifer Taylor, described Dee Why Library as Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs’s “first widely acclaimed building.”
“With it, Madigan produced a strong work, convincing in its expertise and its accord with the conditions of its place. In the interior, the careful detailing, the competent handling of the structure and the effective use of highlighting introduced hallmarks of later work,” Taylor said.
In 2004, the library was at risk of being demolished when the area was one of several sites under consideration to become home to the Northern Beaches Hospital. Thankfully for Dee Why Library, Frenchs Forest eventually was the chosen location.
Dee Why Library’s 50th birthday celebration will be held at Dee Why Library from 10 am – 4 pm on 19 November. For further information visit the Northern Beaches Council website.
