Karori Community Library

The Wellington City Council brief for a community facility included a library, public toilets, café, community centre and public urban spaces. Fronting Karori’s main road and located in the heart of Karori’s shopping centre, the Karori Community Centre is highly visible and easily accessible.

A staged landscaping design proposal provides access and linkages to the Library and Community Centre, the existing Art and Craft Centre, Recreation Centre, and public toilets. 

The two storey library presents two main facades; a town square entrance, highly glazed with sheltering roof form to the north, and street façade, glazed at pedestrian level with upper wall, perforated with glazing to reduce solar gain, but allowing views of interior activities at the upper library level. The cladding uses hardiflex panelling set to shallow angles, providing a textured surface to the street, modulated by the regular glazing set out at ground level. 

Internally, the upper level is set back from the street façade for visual, air circulation and stair connections between floors. Interior public volumes form large spaces with generous scaled ceiling heights to suit. A precast double T floor system provides floor loading requirements for library stack collections, and a reflective surface of painted patterned ribs aid lighting. Concrete surfaces are exposed providing thermal mass assisting mechanical air ventilation system, which is circulated within the concrete ground floor, to high level collection grilles along the building’s length. This reduced the need for ducting services. Glazing is Low E solar control quality which has allowed greater glazed zones for visibility to the street. The client encouraged these linkages to make the library accessible. Back of house activities for staff are located along the rear of the building, away from public areas and direct sunlight. The café, run by separate tenants, is accessed from both the library, and town square, allowing interaction with library users. Provision for all the library collection requirements have been met, including a specialised spaces for children’s reading, computers, video displays, and local heritage documents. 

A palette of materials includes painted red walls, local artworks, and timber veneer. Flooring combines colour carpet strip inserts linking with the exterior paving patterns to the town square and proposed stage two urban areas. Reuse of existing laid commemorative pavers and a historic ramp have been incorporated into the town square’s access ramp linking to the Recreation Community Centre.