The University of Sydney’s Fisher Library celebrates 60th anniversary on 6 November 2023.
Designed by NSW Government Architects Office (architect: Ted Farmer, designers: Ken Woolley and Tom O’Mahoney), Fisher Library broke the mold of traditional academic libraries.
“The new library marked a transition from an older conception of the institute as a privileged enclave of scholarship and elite networking towards a modern, knowledge-centred public resource,” wrote Cameron Logan in Australia Modern (Hannah Lewi and Philip Goad (eds), Thames and Hudson).
Fisher Library was constructed in two stages. The first, a five-storey column-and-slab structure housed the undergraduate library. It had an open terrace on the top floor which, to mark the 60th anniversary, will reopen for the first time in 30 years.
The roof terrace on the top floor of the undergraduate library will be reopened for the first time in 30 years.
Image:
Courtesy University of Sydney
At the completion of the first stage in 1962, the building received the Sulman Medal (the highest award for public architecture in New South Wales), and a Bronze Medal from the Royal institute of British Architects.
The second stage comprised an eight-storey book-stack building, which was linked to the earlier building via a vestibule.
At the time of its construction, Fisher Library was the first building in Australia to use reverse cycle air-conditioning.
Fisher Library was a place for students to meet and collaborate. It had telephone booths, lounges, a music listening area.
Fisher Library originally housed a music listening room.
Image:
Courtesy University of Sydney
“Known for its modernist and celebrated architecture, Fisher Library as we know it now was officially opened in 1963 at a time of great social change and investment in education,” said Philip Kent, librarian at the University of Sydney.
Fisher Library is heritage listed in the City of Sydney. Its statement of heritage significance described the building as “a triumph of modernist theory.”
“The horizontality of the Undergraduate Wing is balanced by the vertical emphasis of the Bookstack, resulting in a functional articulation which is the most resolved of the University’s post-war modern buildings,” the statement reads.
“The Fisher Library is one of the buildings at the University of Sydney which makes the university an outstanding architectural precinct.”
Source: Architecture - architectureau
