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Architects: MGS Architects
- Area: 4010 m²
- Year: 2014
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Photographs:Andrew Latreille
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Manufacturers: ACME1, LOCKER GROUP
Text description provided by the architects. After four years of design and development, MGS Architects has delivered the New Generation Bendigo Library, offering state of the art library and community services including spaces to meet and for quiet reflection, a café, a volunteer resource centre, a children’s library and “cubby house”, gallery spaces, upgraded research facilities and extended internet access for the community.
The library, now Victoria’s second largest after the State Library, has been fitted with the latest radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for seamless borrowing services and is home to the Goldfields Library Corporation.
The redevelopment comprises 4,000 square metres of functional areas over two levels, designed to offer a flexible and inclusive library that allows people to meet, exchange ideas and interact with each other through both programmes and chance.
The project incorporates the pre-existing 1984 building with frontage to public gardens in the historic centre of Bendigo in a contemporary architectural and interior design responses maximising the opportunities to engage with the public realm. The building’s design demonstrates the City of Bendigo’s commitment to enacting council’s environmental sustainability policies by incorporating a Building Management System, which tracks energy use and transmits this information in real time to the occupants, allowing visitors the opportunity to understand and interact with how much energy is used.
Directors Eli Giannini and Joshua Wheeler led the project team at MGS Architects. “Our projects are recognised for creating places for people,” Mr Wheeler says.
“We’re extremely proud of this project. We’ve provided high quality architecture and interior design for the Bendigo Library, and we look forward to its continued success in the community.”
“The thing I am most proud of is the community response” said Project Director from the City of Bendigo, Marg Allan.
”In the first ten days alone, 20,000 people have already visited the library.” She said.
“That is just amazing.”
More recent figures have shown 55,000 people visited the library in the first month of operation with a 230% increase in Library Membership.
