Propped up to be read from Carlisle Street,
the Library’s 1992-94 façade forms a giant book. But its 1971-73 building
references St Kilda’s waterfront setting. Look
closely, and it appears as if a sleek grey ocean-going cruiser has moored in
Carlisle Street:
its ten metre high ‘smoke-stack’ towers over ‘saloon’ windows and
‘portholes’ piercing its battleship grey flanks.
The
1971-73 library is a deceptively large building, it covers almost 50 metres
square from Carlisle to
Duke Streets. The indebtedness of this Brutalist
design (with its stained rough timbers and its exposed ‘off-form’ raw concrete,
clearly expressed oversized elements (such as here the deep fascias and
spandrels) to Le Corbusier, arguably the greatest
architect of the first half of the Twentieth Century, is signalled by the
adoption of his trademark ink-stencilled numbers on architect Dr
Taglietti’s pencilled drawings, prepared in October
1971. Le Corbusier developed the style from 1945.
Other influences could include Frank Lloyd Wright, but also perhaps closer to
Milan,
the masterly Carlo Scarpa of Venice,
particularly in the use of natural materials and the layered platforms, which
stratify the meeting of the building and its site.
No other building in Melbourne
is directly comparable to Taglietti’s library. Dr
Taglietti’s other major Melbourne
building is 570 Collins Street
and his other buildings around Melbourne
are not quite so unconstrained or stylised, nor so comfortably settled onto
their sites.
Dr EnricoTaglietti was born in Milan
in about 1934. At the age of 30, he won the commission to design the Embassy of
the Republic
of Italy,
in Canberra.
In about 1965 he came to Australia
to supervise its construction and stayed on in Canberra,
where he still lives. He opened an office there in Flinders Way.
His design of Canberra’s
Dixon Library preceded that for the St Kilda Library.
The story of a library for St Kilda goes back
110 years earlier. In 1860, a public meeting was held to consider a suggestion
that the St Kilda Council contribute £100 toward purchase of books for the
Mechanics’ Institute and £500 towards construction of a free public library and
Mechanics’ Institute building. By 1863 the library was actually operating in
the old Town Hall, corner Barkly and Acland Streets (now demolished). It held
500 books. Subscribers paid a £1 annual fee.
By 1910, however, the library was in decline
and after transferring to the present Town Hall, closed down. In 1953, a
committee was again formed to float the idea of a free lending library for St
Kilda. This was opposed by the Council due to cost and duplication of various
private lending libraries locally.
In 1967, the idea of a library for St Kilda
was revived, and it became a hot election issue, closely fought. Eventually,
council resolved to reserve an inadequate $50,000 for the building. The late
Vida Horn was the first librarian and a force behind the opening of the library.
In December 1971 a tender of $417,000 was accepted to construct Dr
Taglietti’s design. The new library was opened by
the Victorian Governor in May 1973.
St Kilda Library, 2002
In 1994, Ashton RaggattMcDougall’s (ARM) design for a major addition to the
library was under construction, simultaneously with their major addition and
reconstruction of the Town Hall complex across Carlisle Street
(33).
Stephen Ashton and Howard
Raggatt studied architecture at the University
of Melbourne
in the late 1970s. After practicing individually, they joined as Ashton and
Raggett in 1984 and combined with Ian
McDougall in 1986. The firm has been extremely
prolific, published and awarded. Their designs are invariably memorable images.
These include: offices at 221 Drummond Street (1986); Brunswick Community Health
Centre (1985-90); Storey Hall, RMIT University (1995);
Promedicus offices, 450 Swan Street, Burnley (1995); Ministry of Housing
flats remodelling, 12 Holland Court, Flemington (1995), various schools, houses
and most recently, the controversial Museum of Australia, Canberra (2001).
At St Kilda Library, facing the Town Hall
plaza, ARM’s design is façaded
by its stone-clad book, which confronts the Town Hall plaza, reinforcing the
traditional bookish role of libraries everywhere. Yet paradoxically, the pages
of the book are penetrated by an S-profiled window, like a warped computer
monitor screen. It is as if the electronic technology is emerging from the
printed page. The sinuous S-curved plan form is as dynamic as a façade design by
Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), one of the greatest
Roman Baroque architects. .
A graphics tower confronts the Carlisle Street
pedestrian. This Post-modernist conceit remarkably blends with Dr
Taglietti’s layered Brutalism in a masterly way. It
won two Royal Australian Institute of Architects awards in 1995, commended for
both its architecture and interior architecture.
References
Architect.Vol 3.
No 27 July-August 1973. pp12-15.
Architect.Vol 3.
No 28 September-October 1973. p25.
Architectural
drawings for St Kilda Library.
Sheets 1-3, dated 22.10.1971. Held: Peter
Schenkel.
Cooper, John
Butler. The History of St Kilda from its First
Settlement to a City and After.1840-1930.
St Kilda City Council.
Melbourne
1931.
Day, N.& Jackson,
D. St Kilda’s New Chapter’. Vogue Living.
No 2 April 1995.
