Sydney’s Green Square Library and Plaza competition has been won by Sydney’s Stewart Hollenstein in association with Colin Stewart Architects (Canberra).
Their proposal for an urban living room with activities distributed across a field of indoor and outdoor spaces, and a sunken recreational garden was unanimously selected by the jury, whose chair, John Denton, reported: “While another design might have been a great library for today, the winning design represented a great library for the future.”
“It was the only scheme to challenge the notion of placing a building in the Plaza, managing to put forward a strong argument for placing the Plaza over the Library, thereby providing both a building and a suitably scaled urban plaza for the future developments around the site, becoming a beacon and an oasis for the whole Green Square community. The jury responded positively to how this scheme would maximise the opportunity for sunlight into the entire Plaza area.”
In October 2012, Stewart Hollenstein + Colin Stewart Architects were shortlisted from the 167 entries in the two-stage competition, along with JPE Design Studio (Adelaide), John Wardle Architects (Melbourne), Flannery & de la Pole (London) and Felix Laboratories (Fremantle).
The jury included architects John Denton (jury chair), Glenn Murcutt AO and Rachel Neeson, American landscape architect George Hargreaves (landscape master plan designer for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games), Sharan Harvey (Brisbane City Council Library services manager), and Stuart McCreery (engineering and public building adviser).
Download the full jury report.
