Ingleburn Cultural Centre

The Ingleburn Library and Community Centre replaces a 1990’s conversion of a local RSL Club built in the early 1960’s which included a small Library and a Community Hall. The old club building was located next to the heritage, but long unused, 1920’s School of Arts building. The facility includes a 2 storey Library building, a large Community Centre which incorporated the School of Arts building and a large town park with a formal area and a large family / child play area. The Community Function Centre incorporates the important local Heritage School of Arts Building. The existing building structure was retained and retro-fitted as the main entry and focus for the new building, doubling as an interpretive local Gallery. The new Library of 1500m2 has a large 2 storey volume with a floating mezzanine housing the reference Library, study pods and the staff workrooms. The building is designed to be an ‘extension’ of the new park, with tree like internal columns and walkways which move through the building to become the main pathways of the park. The mezzanine “floats” within the overall space and is accessed by a beautiful curved steel spiral stair. The building collection areas are organised by genre with shared open reading areas and fully integrated digital collections. The children’s and young adult library occupies one full side of the building. A 40m joinery unit runs along the wall. It begins in the young children’s area as a train then becomes a row of reading nooks and finally becomes a curvilinear desk for computers and study. The Community Centre has three meeting areas for 50, 100 and 400 people arranged around the old School of Arts building which has been converted to a large open foyer / exhibition space. The School of Arts building’s facades and overall form have been retained. Its roof trusses have been re-used with a new glazed roof and window openings around the façade have been enlarged and converted to walkways linking to the new meeting rooms. The rooms are already very successful and in their first month of operation are almost fully booked with a large range of meeting and functions.