In Phoenix, sprawl creates cultural, economic, and architectural mash-ups both weird and wonderful. Time and space collapse in the so-called Valley of the Sun, opening up views of Jiffy Lubes framed by rugged mountains, foreclosed houses next to a new boutique hotel, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien’s Phoenix Art Museum just blocks away from a mock-Aztec restaurant offering “Mex & Match” menu items. This is where the frontier meets the strip mall. Will Bruder, who moved here from Milwaukee more than 35 years ago, knows and loves this place. His work—from the Deer Valley Rock Art Center [RECORD, October 1995, page 64] to the Central Library and Loloma 5 condominiums [RECORD, July 2005, page 132]—mines the area’s geological, archaeological, and stylistic heritage, then transforms these sources into buildings that glorify the act of construction, whether humble or lavish. Without ever being literal, his designs put you in touch with desert ravines, Hohokam ruins, and the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Approaching Bruder’s new Agave Library in an outlying part of town, you drive past a car wash and a Blimpie before reaching what seems to be a tilting, curving billboard with giant letters sliding off to one side. Made of vertical strips of galvanized-steel hat channels attached to steel I-columns and tube beams, the freestanding structure serves as a false front announcing the library. Leaving narrow spaces between the steel channels and using reflective film for the letters spelling out agave, the architect made sure the supersize “scrim” (56 feet at its highest point) plays with shadow and light during the day and catches headlights at night. “It’s a cowboy front with a scale and presence big enough to signify the civic role of a library,” says Bruder, referring to 19th-century Western buildings that used false fronts to seem grander than they really were. The next moment, he’s talking about the library’s scrim as a drive-in movie screen, adding another layer of cultural reference to the mix.
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