Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00148:reg:2017:p11
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00148
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2017 (pt 11/81)
Character Range: 69033–71957

the Library, and the re-configuration and upgrade works to the entry drive and fountain east of the Library entrance in 2010.

2.3.3 Design and construction of the National Library Building

In 1965 the NCDC set out its beliefs about the desired architectural style of new buildings in the Parliamentary triangle,

    '[The] architectural merit of the buildings [should be] based on the enduring qualities of appropriate scale, good proportions and fine materials… and not merely patterned in the prevailing international style… The buildings in the city's business and residential areas may reflect changing functions and fashions in design but those in the central areas should be modelled in such proportions and fit their functions and environment in such a way that they satisfy the needs of the nation for a far longer period…'

    'In Canberra buildings are seen in straight elevations from great distances… it is necessary for the facades of the buildings to be simple and sufficiently large in scale to be easily apparent when viewed from comparatively great distances.'[44]

Because of the then-likely close relationship between the library building and the proposed lakeside Parliament House, the design brief for the National Library building required it to be, in the words of John Overall, Commissioner of the NCDC and Chairman of the National Capital Planning Committee, 'a large, attractive, but unassertive building befitting the central area, while not dominating it.'[45]  Prime Minister Menzies himself took an interest in the design, and was openly adverse to the idea of a modern building, preferring to see 'something with columns'.[46]

The building was designed by Sydney architect Walter Bunning of the Sydney firm Bunning & Madden in association with T E O'Mahony, commencing in 1961 following a limited competition.  Bunning & Madden set up a Canberra office headed by Noel Potter, which took on a number of other prominent architectural commissions in the national capital.  O'Mahony had designed the recently completed Fisher Library at the University of Sydney.  Keyes Metcalf, a prominent American librarian and Director of the Harvard University Library, and a world-leading authority on library design, was engaged as a consultant to advise on the National Library.

Bunning and O'Mahony, accompanied by National Library librarian Courtenay Key, undertook a tour of libraries in the USA, to inform the design of the national library.[47]

The design was influenced by the work of the prize-winning American architect, Edward Durrell Stone, whose American Embassy in New Delhi (1958) inspired early sketches for the National Library building.[48]  Stone liked his buildings to stand as isolated objects in open space, a requirement for the National Library, and he used luxurious materials on often box-like buildings.[49]  Walter Bunning's own trip to Greece and the Parthenon was another