BY THE BOOK
WHEN I LEFT a full-time job to go freelance several years ago, I began working from my local public library. Every weekday morning, I would queue outside Surry Hills Library on bustling Crown Street in Sydney. At precisely 10am I joined the stream of gig-economy workers coursing through the doors beneath a green wall of plants and a spectacular atrium made up of a series of glass prisms. But admiring the architecture of the Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp-designed building wasn’t my priority: my mission was to secure one of the precious powerpoints at the street-side desks with views onto the adjacent park, for which demand far exceeded supply.
“People today are not just reading books in [libraries], but running businesses, creating products, making music and holding meetings,” says Stewart Architecture director Felicity Stewart, whose firm designed Sydney’s Green Square Library in association with Stewart Hollenstein.
“In an
