Mak­ing More of Motif

Xsite Archi­tects’ adven­tures in sym­bol­ism at the John Kinder Theo­lo­gical Lib­rary. From ProDesign 105 with addi­tional images and drawings.

Words: Michael Bar­rett Images: Simon Devitt

The John Kinder Theo­lo­gical Lib­rary in Auckland.

Fraught with dis­aster is the road of cul­tural motif woven with build­ing design. If you get it wrong, there’s a def­in­ite risk of com­ing across as pat­ron­ising and, at worst, insult­ing. Still, there’s no short­age of archi­tects and design­ers who are keen to run the risk and use sym­bol­ism as the link between edi­fice, com­munity and place. The John Kinder Theo­lo­gical Col­lege is a pro­ject, I think, that suc­ceeds with the restrained intro­duc­tion of motif – almost against all odds, I think, as archi­tect Mal­colm Taylor of Xsite Archi­tects begins relay­ing inform­a­tion about Maori weav­ing motifs over­laid with tartan. Aue, Jimmy!

South Elev­a­tion.

Entrance detail.

East Elev­a­tion.

The John Kinder Lib­rary is part of the Anglican cam­pus at the St Johns Theo­lo­gical Col­lege, in Auck­land, and as such it’s the lib­rary and archive for the Anglican Church in New Zea­l­and and Poly­ne­sia. Its col­lec­tion includes 90,000 books, DVDs, CDs and some older audio and video­tapes, as well as both print and elec­tronic cop­ies of journ­als. The pro­ject under­taken by Xsite Archi­tects was the refur­bish­ment the exist­ing build­ing, which was designed by John Dan­cey in the late ‘70s.

That build­ing, to my eye, was smartly designed (although Judith Bright, lib­rar­ian and arch­iv­ist for the church, does say that design was not “par­tic­u­larly adven­tur­ous”). It incor­por­ates a num­ber of inter­est­ing fea­tures, which remain today, such as a large cent­ral light well, impress­ive rimu beams that form a lat­tice on the ceil­ing, fur­ther rimu detail­ing around the light well, win­dows and doors, and oppor­tun­it­ies for cross-ventilation, or in other words, oper­able windows.

Vis­it­ors to the lib­rary first exper­i­ence the redesign work through slight changes to the building’s exter­ior form and more sig­ni­fic­ant changes to the sur­round­ing land­scape. Boffa Miskell, the land­scape archi­tects have provided vis­it­ors with an eas­ily under­stand­able, intu­it­ive course to the library’s front doors, and stepped lightly around the sac­red ground of a nearby grave­yard. Grey por­cel­ain tiles lead the way towards the build­ing, past pub­lic seat­ing areas, and also con­tinue into the build­ing. The tiles altern­ate between smooth– and rough-faced, and the tex­tures cre­ate a subtle motif.

East­ern side of the build­ing with archi­tect designed fur­niture and wooden louvres.

Out­door tile detail.

Exter­ior.

“The new por­cel­ain tiles ref­er­ence a theme of weav­ing, altern­at­ing highly tex­tured tiles with smooth sur­faced tiles to cre­ate a pat­tern reflect­ive of a Maori motif, Te Hikapuhi,” says Taylor. “This tile pat­tern fea­tures in the land­scape design and con­denses in the approach to the lib­rary, where it dom­in­ates the entry foyer before con­tinu­ing into the main lib­rary space. The con­tinu­ity of mater­i­als estab­lishes a stronger rela­tion­ship between the build­ing and its surroundings.”

Entrance lobby.

New out­door areas include a small deck con­nec­ted to the building’s east­ern side, allow­ing views towards Ran­gitoto Island. The applic­a­tion of fixed tim­ber louvres to this side of the build­ing has the dual effect of pro­tect­ing the books from sun dam­age and dir­ect­ing the line of sight from the bal­cony to the view bey­ond. Other aes­thetic treat­ments include plas­ter­ing, and then col­our match­ing,
the brown brick of the exist­ing build­ing to the Oamaru stone of the neigh­bour­ing Pat­ter­son Building.

Above the tiles through the library’s entrance­way is a tim­ber can­opy, an arrange­ment of over­lap­ping bat­tens, which can also be read as a ref­er­ence to weav­ing. The primary bene­fit of the can­opy, as I under­stand it, is that it provides vis­it­ors with a sense of com­pres­sion before they are released into the volume of the lib­rary. The arrange­ments of the over­lap­ping tim­ber bat­tens, which are dual col­oured, grey and dark brown, “speak of a tra­di­tional Maori thatch­ing con­struc­tion and strongly resembles a weav­ing pat­tern and bas­ket of knowledge.”

That entrance exper­i­ence is accen­tu­ated by the large light well, the sides of which were ori­gin­ally clad in a coated rimu. Taylor says the paint­ers were some­what aghast when he dir­ec­ted them to apply a clean white fin­ish to the tim­ber, but the rewards at stake were more reflec­ted light and a lighter, less top-heavy atmosphere.

Ceil­ing light well.

Entrance foyer.

Interior of library.

Car­pet detail.

Inside the main space, just past the futur­istic elec­tro­mag­netic secur­ity pan­els (yes, I guess even theo­logy lib­rar­ies need secur­ity sys­tems) the ceramic tiles even­tu­ally give way to the car­pet tiles that are a key ori­ent­a­tion device. This is where Taylor’s tartan Pacific island mash-up comes into play. The design is com­plic­ated, pleas­ant, inter­est­ing, and a test­a­ment to the pre­ci­sion you can achieve with this style
of carpeting.

“The col­ours delin­eate cir­cu­la­tion routes,” says Taylor. “They sig­nify move­ment, and they’re also a sym­bolic ref­er­ence to the cross and the col­ours of the church.

“In the main space we con­tin­ued the weav­ing concept by altern­at­ing the ori­ent­a­tion of the car­pet tiles by 90 degrees to achieve the pat­tern in cer­tain areas. At this stage we intro­duced another dimen­sion – a European tartan pat­tern applied as an over­lay onto the car­pet lay­out. The tartan has a black base and an accent col­our in con­tinu­ous strips through­out the spaces. It’s a more mod­ern influ­ence and the col­our coördin­a­tion reflects the indi­vidual spaces and the dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies of books.”

The oppor­tun­ity to cross-ventilate the build­ing was an import­ant step, recalls the archi­tect, free­ing up cap­ital for use else­where. There are numer­ous other neat tech­niques through­out the build­ing: the main body of the lib­rary isn’t air-conditioned, although the rearranged offices at the building’s peri­meter are when needed. Taylor used a T-wall glass par­ti­tion sys­tem to cre­ate these office areas, which also has the effect of cre­at­ing a visual imme­di­acy with staff mem­bers. It’s a “median of com­mu­nic­a­tion rather than a phys­ical bar­rier between the stu­dent space and the staff space”. Staff actu­ally lost space with the revised sur­rounds, but bet­ter arrange­ment of work desks provide them with bet­ter con­di­tions. Light­ing aisles between book­shelves is a prob­lem in any lib­rary and Taylor’s solu­tion in this instance was a series of zig­zag­ging luminar­ies. The diag­onal treat­ment designed to provide greater coverage.

To clean up the end of the rows of books, fas­cias of light metal were applied, a neat solu­tion that meant that the expense of intro­du­cing a com­pletely new shelving sys­tem could be avoided.

There’s plenty to like about this lib­rary, it’s a refined space with all the accoutre­ments required for mod­ern study, includ­ing a 24-hour access inform­a­tion com­mons area and quiet study areas. It’s light, bright and subtly sym­bolic. There might be mean­ing there if you dig for it, but it’s not too lit­eral. When it comes to sym­bol­ism at this lib­rary it’s a ‘take what you will’ exper­i­ence, not a full-frontal assault.

Selec­ted credits:

Cli­ent St Johns Trust
Archi­tect Xsite Archi­tects
Pro­ject Man­ager Davis Lang­don
Fit-out con­tractor Robert Cun­ning­ham Con­struc­tion
Ser­vices con­sult­ants Struc­ture, Thorne Dwyer; mech­an­ical, Thur­ston Con­sult­ing; elec­trical, ESC Ser­vices; fire, Coupe­land Con­sult­ing; quant­ity sur­veyor, BQH; acous­tics, Mar­shall Day
Land­scape archi­tect Boffa Miskell
Window/door join­ery Com­mer­cial Glass
Archi­tec­tural hard­ware Apsect Interi­ors; Hal­l­i­day and Bailey
Glass Work and sig­nage Har­bour City Signs
Win­dow treat­ments Ven-lu-ree
Paint Resene
Floor­ing GBS
Light­ing Light Plan and Tar­getti
Light fit­tings Light Plan
Tiles and vinyl floor­ing Jac­ob­sens
T-Wall sys­tem Aspect
Fur­niture Aspect Interi­ors; Cam­ira; Pyr­amid; Cite; Xsite Archi­tects (out­door tables); Office Research; Gregory
Stor­age Aspect Interi­ors; Cemac
Tex­tiles James Dun­lop; Woven Image
Art Elana Prado; Eve Bor­ley; John Kinder; Charlie McKenzie

Weav­ing – image sourced from: Raranga Whakairo, Maori Plait­ing Pat­terns by Mick Pendergrast.

Desk detail.

Recep­tion.

The inspir­a­tion for the entrance can­opy was drawn from tra­di­tional and con­tem­por­ary Maori bas­ket weaving.

Cir­cu­la­tion route.

Read­ing rooms.

Car­pet pattern.

Bath­room, with ceil­ing device.

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