Guide: Libraries and community centres

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St Benedict’s rules for monastic life, written in 516AD, stated that monks were to read for at least two hours a day and, for this purpose, were to be provided with ‘individual volumes from the book cupboard’. The monastic practices of gathering, reading, copying and writing books sowed the seeds of the Western tradition of shared libraries. In the earliest libraries, the books and the reading lecterns they sat on were the dominant elements of the space. With the advent of the printing press, books became both smaller and more numerous and retreated to wall shelves, allowing the space of the room itself to come into play. This set the pattern for library design; unlike some building types where the technology of their construction is crucial – office towers, sports halls – library layouts are determined by the technology of their content.

By the time New Zealand began urbanising, a public library was an essential civic amenity for any self-respecting town. Grainger & D’Ebro’s 1887 Auckland Public Library (now home to the Art Gallery) was one of the most exuberant projects yet built in the city and, in the first decade of the 20th century, the American philanthropic Carnegie programme built 18 libraries in small towns and regional centres. That said, for most of our history, libraries were not an especially important part of our architectural canon. Two of the first dozen buildings to receive NZIA national awards in the 1920s were libraries but only