Macquarie University Library

Brief information

In this library, most of the printed collection is not kept on open shelves. About 80% of the physical collection is stored in an automated storage and retrieval system: books and other items lie in metal bins in a controlled repository, while robotic cranes deliver the requested item on demand. Because of this, the library reads not only as a hall with books, but also as a precise warehouse of knowledge, where logistics have become part of the architecture.

The new building opened on July 25, 2011, and is designed to support different forms of study: it includes spaces for group and individual work, computers, study places with power for laptops, and dedicated rooms for postgraduate students. Importantly, compact storage has not hidden the library from people, but has freed up space for study and access.

What to notice right away

It is worth comparing the elements that make the building feel less like an ordinary book repository. The green roof with grass and gardens, natural-light wells for the lower floors, external shading fins, and zoned lighting show that work with light, heat, and space is built into the structure rather than added as decoration. The use of recycled materials in construction continues the same logic of a modern educational building.

Another layer is visible at the entrance: the Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie Memorial Room is located there. It is not a stylization, but the original drawing room from their house on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. Its wooden panels, doors, windows, niches, shutters, and fireplace from the 1820s have been preserved. Against the backdrop of the robotic storage system, this room changes the way one sees the library: within a single building, automated cranes for books coexist with a relocated nineteenth-century domestic interior.