
When Phoenix needed a new central library, the city turned to Will Bruder Architects, which produced a mesa-like design that was as environmentally sensitive as it was aesthetically striking. Completed in 1995, the library has become a treasured icon, its annual summer solstice celebration renowned for a dazzling light show that the architects engineered with their careful placement of the skylights. Here’s Will Bruder, FAIA, on the project’s legacy.
What was the greatest achievement in the design of the library?
That the library’s built reality has been functionally adaptable for 25 years of programmatic changes, including radical collection movements on all levels, without compromising the building’s iconic image or its architectural integrity.
What problem or brief was the project attempting to solve?
The 650-page building program document was crafted over three months by the architectural team following intensive meetings with the entire library staff and more than 28 public input sessions choreographed by the architects. This resulted in an architectural solution that would prove flexible, easy to staff, and simple for the public to use while achieving a maximum building area within the limits of the $100-per-square-foot budget.

What attracted you to the project?
The attraction was my passion for the library as a building type. I had worked on library designs throughout my professional career starting with my apprenticeship in 1965. My own studio’s first library project was the modest 10,000-square-foot Phoenix Mesquite Branch Library in 1977. Following that successful endeavor, which included interiors and graphics, I continued my involvement with the Phoenix library system on numerous small renovations, including the 30,000-square-foot Cholla Branch Library remodel/expansion.
In 1988, the citizens of Phoenix, under the leadership of then-Mayor Terry Goddard, passed a bond issue that reflected Goddard’s commitment to an architectural vision for the city’s emerging cultural institutions, including a new Phoenix Central Library. I had just completed a six-month mid-career design fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and I felt ready to meet the challenge of going after this commission—project number 317 of my career.
How did you win the commission?
The solicitation of interest for the design of the new Phoenix Central Library was announced in May 1989. The very next day I cold-called the office of Ove Arup and Partners in London. Ove Arup informed me that they had recently established their first U.S. office. A week later, I traveled to Los Angeles and met with the U.S. managing partner Peter Budd and his associate Sharlene Silverman to make my case. Soon after, Silverman spent a day visiting my desert studio and touring my built work. She liked what she saw and said Ove Arup would join my team.

With Ove Arups’ commitment in hand, I visited—for the first time—the Phoenix office of DWL Architects, a most respected 50-year-old Modernist firm with vast public building experience and two large university libraries in its portfolio. Our chemistry was exceptionally positive from the start, and the firm committed to joining my team. With Will Bruder Architects as design lead, we had a 50-50 relationship on everything, but final design decisions tipped to us.
Following careful review of the 10-page submissions by 25 responding firms, the city’s selection committee narrowed the field to five teams for interview. The finalists, which each had a local associate, were 3DI of Houston, Shepley Bullfinch Richardson of Boston, Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico City, Antoine Predock, FAIA, of Albuquerque, and us.
Our interview team was small: myself; Carl Van Deman, the president of DWL Architects; and Peter Budd. We realized an important way we could express our ability to conceptualize on a grand scale and lead a large project team was to take full advantage of the hour we were given by preparing the interview room prior to our presentation. Fourteen people including architects, craftsmen, lighting designers, and friends built a large sculptural display wall for our work (no slides with lights out), reconfiguring and covering the simulated wood-grain folding tables with a neutral gray fabric. Every light fixture in the room was re-lamped to a dramatic atmospheric color temperature. A custom lighting bar was added to illuminate our centerpiece: a 3-foot-by-7-foot wood model we had made of the city surrounding the library site (1 by 2 miles at a scale of 1 inch to 100 feet), with the new library represented by a polished clear plexiglass block. The huge model was an expensive prop but a dramatic way to express our understanding of the library as being the larger city, not merely its two-acre site.

Our presentation was slotted last of the five candidates. It went smoothly and we finished our formal section in half the allotted time, allowing for a robust dialogue between our team and the selection panel. Three days later we learned that the panel had unanimously chosen our team for the commission.
Critical to grounding our vision for this architectural journey was a 10-day European adventure taken the week after the Phoenix City Council approved our selection in February 1990. First stop was Paris, with a visit to the St. Geneviève Library and Bibliotheque Nationale, both by Henri Labrouste. Then we made our first visit to Centre Pompidou. On days two and three we visited the Zurich studio of Santiago Calatrava, Hon. FAIA (whom I had met in 1987 during my time at the American Academy in Rome) and saw his current work at the time, which included two small libraries. Day four took us to Amsterdam, where we met in the studio of Herman Hertzberger to review his unsuccessful scheme for the Paris National Library. That afternoon event was followed by a day of visiting his built work surrounding the city. On day seven we landed in Glasgow where our focus was the work of Charles Rennie MacKintosh and in particular the Glasgow School of Art, which had been designed on a very modest budget. It would become an iconic masterpiece with important lessons for our project.
Finally, we arrived in London at Ove Arup’s offices, where we met Sir Jack Zunz, the structural engineer of the Sydney Opera House and the Centre Pompidou. Later that day, we found ourselves with Arup’s engineers on the rooftop of the Lloyd’s of London building that they had designed with Richard Rodgers, Hon. FAIA. Our London visit ended with Jan Kyplickan and Amanda Leviete of Future Systems, studying their unsuccessful entry for the Paris National Library.

What was the biggest challenge posed by the commission?
The biggest challenge was not to preconceive any architectural concepts or ideas before really having the grasp of the site, the program, and the potentials of our design team. With contract in hand, it would take fully a year before all of these elements would come completely together in January 1991.
Beginning with three months of intensive interviews conducted by our team, every functional aspect was discussed and defined with Dr. Ralph Edwards, the city librarian; Rosemary Nelson, the Central Library director; Eleanor Green Hunter, president of the library board; and the entire library staff. Simultaneously, more than two dozen citizen meetings addressed issues of context, parking, usability, and building image. Many ideas were shared, and the community began to take ownership of the project. Coinciding with the refinements of the program, the building systems and materials were intensively researched under the direction of Wendall Burnette and our team of technical experts. Issues of sustainability were exhaustively explored. Massing strategies, structural systems, cladding elements, glazing systems, mechanical systems, lighting systems, ceiling systems, data networks, and interior finishes were all analyzed for their aesthetic, functional, and cost implications. The building grid was carefully developed to maximize flexibility, driven by the 3-foot model of the standard library bookshelf.

During this research period, Edwards, Nelson, and key design team members went on a five-city case-study trip to experience eight of the most recently completed central libraries in North America, including ones in Dallas, Atlanta, Broward County, Fla., and Toronto.
Only when the program was in hand, site analysis complete, spatial relationships proposed, and technical research accomplished, did the architectural concept begin to grow. The design evolved over a period of more than three months, starting with a solid core concept that was transformed into a scheme with the metaphorical power and poetic qualities of the completed building.
At key points, the process was aided by a wide variety of influences: critical input by various users and consultants, deep soul searching by the design team, my intensive reading of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and research on late 20th-century cottage design, and a search for a metaphorical language to describe, complement, and celebrate the building’s architecture. These disparate influences shaped the building from the inside out and the outside in. Two small but accurate sketch models in copper painted textured basswood with silver mylar, as well as four soft-pencil renderings, energized the clients, the community, and city council and the mayor with our vision for the project. After a year of exhaustive testing of ideas, study models, and full-scale mock-ups, the building’s engineering and technical documentation was complete. Two years later, it evolved into the built reality that is the Phoenix Central Library.


What other buildings or architects served as inspiration during the project?
My practice had always been focused on creating a desert-appropriate and energy-passive architecture, from our first modest residences and commercial and civic buildings in the early 1970s. My deep knowledge of work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri inspired my passion for materials.
Inspiration also came from the Bibliotheque Nationale by Henri Labrouste, the Exeter Academy Library by Louis Kahn, the tensegrity sculptures of Kenneth Snelson, the geologic mesas of Monument Valley in Arizona, and many trips to Walter De Maria’s “The Lightning Field.”
Why was there so much focus on creating a sustainable efficient design?
Even though the LEED system of rating and valuing sustainable architecture did not exist yet, our ethos and aesthetic as design professionals meant the library had to become the poster child for the future of best practices. Sustainable features included optimizing the thermal mass “swings” of the structure, minimizing east- and west-facing glazing, optimizing the solar shielding of the major glazing surfaces—on the south with horizontal louvers, and on the north with vertical sculptural “shade sails”—and selectively manipulating the sunlight coming through the skylights on the fifth floor. If it was to be successful, this library needed to take us from the past, when librarians were known as the caretakers of knowledge, to an age when librarians would become the navigators of knowledge. We knew it had to be a sustainable building to best achieve that goal.

What happens during the solstice celebration?
Every year at solar noon on the day of the summer solstice, hundreds of people gather in the Great Reading Room. There, on the fifth floor, the sun washes down the west wall through the 300-foot-long narrow skylight where the wall meets the roof, forming a curtain of light. As the sunlight kisses the floor on the western edge, it rises up the western face of the eastern wall through a similar parallel narrow skylight. At the moment when light and shadow patterns on both east and west walls are symmetrically balanced, the final act unfolds. Through 7-inch-wide “clear circles” located in the blue-tinted skylights, the sun’s rays align to focus on the tips of the building’s tapered concrete columns—each one looking like a candle topped by a flame. That moment marks the start of summer in the Arizona desert, as the library becomes a celebration of Phoenix’s place, not merely in the Southwest, but in the universe.
What turned out better than expected?
The ability of the building to elegantly and functionally keep its architectural integrity while responding to the needs of changing collections, program functions, and systems technology. The respect and pride that the staff and the citizens of Phoenix, as well as the wider international architectural community, have shown for the building’s architecture is most gratifying.
What did not work out as planned?
Perfection is impossible but the library aspires to the definition of architectural design excellence that I was asked to write a few years ago:
When we experience architectural design excellence all our senses are alerted and nourished, our curiosity is piqued, our time and place is reflected and respected in unexpected ways, our minds are opened to new ideas, our confidence in the possibility of the human endeavor is renewed. We feel comfortable yet challenged, understood yet urged to stretch. We want to be in such places alone and together with others. We want to be in such places at all times of day and night and through all seasons. We want time in such places to learn their secrets and confirm the validity of our initial awe. We want such places to serve as markers of our best efforts. We want such places to exist beyond our lifetime.


What would you do over if you could?
Nothing, because I have had the good fortune of being the city’s “on call” architect for the past 25 years when new challenges and needs arose at the library. It has been more about an evolution than doing over.
What is the best description of the finished building?
It seems successful as a Wunderkammer, as every library should aspire to be. The building is filled with invitations to be curious, to learn, to look, to dive deep into something, and to delight all the citizens it serves from toddlers, to teens, to browsers, to scholars, to all those seeking any kind of information, inspiration, connection, comfort, or enjoyment. Phoenicians also get a privileged view of their city’s mountain skyline after a ride to the top of te building in custom glass cab elevators that are the fastest in the city.
What made it so innovative?
It never lost sight of the user or the budget. It made ordinary materials appear extraordinary. It looked at unconventional and innovative ways to solve every problem. It celebrated its place and time.


What do you hope the library’s legacy is?
I think the legacy is the lesson that you can do a lot with a little. We optimized every dollar spent to get the most function and the most memorable architecture, deploying our design efforts and budget very strategically and always with sustainability in mind.
What is the one question that you wish we had asked?
Why are there not more buildings of this excellence? My answer to that question would be that architects too often use the excuse of difficult clients and tight budgets, and we get mediocrity as a result. To quote my mentor, the architect Paul Schweikher: “Usefulness is essential to the design process; it does not inhibit beauty, rather it is a challenge that stimulates invention, and insures importance to the most modest venture.”
What does it mean to win the 25-Year Award?
It is a capstone of my career to date. I share this award joyously and generously with the citizens of Phoenix, the entire design team, and every architect who is curious to learn from its built reality.