Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre

A three-storey civic library in Paul Keating Park, planned around a central atrium and a facade of coloured sunshading louvres. Geneva supplied furniture to the project.

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(01) The brief

Client: City of Canterbury-Bankstown
Location: Bankstown, NSW
Sector: Education and community
Completed: 2014
Delivered with: Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp

A reading room nobody books and nobody owns.

Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre is one of the most recognised public buildings in south-western Sydney. Designed by Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp for Bankstown City Council, now the City of Canterbury-Bankstown, it opened in 2014 and covers 7,235 square metres over three levels in Paul Keating Park. Geneva supplied furniture to the project.

The building is organised around a three-storey central atrium, with a 300-seat theatre, an IT laboratory, conference and meeting rooms, display areas and a cafe arranged around it. The facade carries coloured sunshading louvres in a chevron pattern, which throw a shifting pattern across the floor and the furniture all day.

A public library is the hardest furniture brief in the education and community sector, because nobody books it and nobody owns it. A reading chair is used by a student at nine, a parent with a pram at eleven, someone job-seeking at two and a retiree with a newspaper at four. It is never assigned, never supervised and rarely reset.

That changes what matters. Failure comes from frequency rather than load, so frame construction outranks the stated weight rating. Anything light enough to be moved will be moved. Components have to be replaceable on their own, because a council refreshes a room at a time, not a floor at a time. And the acoustic work falls to soft seating and absorptive surfaces rather than enclosure, because a library atrium is tall, hard and reverberant and the quiet in it is social rather than structural.

7,235Square metres over three levels
3Storey central atrium
2014Completed for Bankstown City Council
2Australian Institute of Architects interior awards, 2015

Bankstown Library atrium seen from the upper level, with stacked timber shelving bays, light stacking chairs and small round tables on the floor below

(02) The atrium

Furniture that stays out of the way of the room

The atrium is three storeys of hard surface, full-height timber shelving and glazing. It is bright, tall and reverberant, and it has a very strong architectural language already.

So the floor plate stays low. Block ottomans in red and dark blue run down the centre line, with light wire-framed chairs and small round tables at the edges. Nothing tall enough to break the sightline, nothing heavy enough that staff cannot move it.

Timber study tables and stacking chairs along the glazed facade at Bankstown Library, with green upholstered seats and the louvred screen outside

(03) Reading and study

The window line does most of the work

Timber tables with stacking chairs in fours and sixes along the glazing, and single reading chairs turned out towards the louvres. This is the most used part of any public library floor and the hardest on furniture.

The chairs here are dragged rather than lifted, and the tables are pushed together and pulled apart by whoever is in the room that hour. Frame and joint construction matter more than any weight rating on a datasheet.

Children’s play space at Bankstown Library, with a sunken red play pit, soft seating and low bright furniture

(04) Children

A room inside the floor

The children's area sits behind a sunken red play pit, with low soft seating and furniture scaled down without becoming flimsy.

Everything here takes more punishment than anything else in the building, and gets cleaned more often. Replaceable components are the difference between a refresh and a re-fit.

(05) The space in full