Since his Burton Barr Phoenix Central Library opened in 1995, Will Bruder has been the architect library officials call whenever the 280,000-square-foot building needs an update. The area that once housed microfiche, for instance, became College Depot, a student-resource center, and the antiquated reference collections were consolidated so that the building could accommodate a makerspace. Bruder has been able to bring the building into the 21st century without compromising his architectural vision, of which flexibility was a key part.
In fact, the library, with two parallel facades of weathered copper, may have achieved Mies van der Rohe’s idea of universal space as successfully as any public building in memory. That’s one reason it has stood the test of time—and is now the winner of the AIA’s prestigious 25-year award, which in the past has gone to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, Louis Kahn’s Exeter library, and Philip Johnson’s Glass House, among others.
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