On the 20th anniversary of michael graves’ flamingo library revamp, some thoughts on library design
CLARK COUNTY LIBRARY
1404 E. Flamingo Road
“I’ve always questioned the impact star architects have on our city,” says architect Eric Strain. They don’t always do their best here, he argues. Example: Graves’ 1994 upcycling of the Flamingo Library — to Strain, it doesn’t measure up to the “ceremonial presence and intimacy” of, say, Graves’ library in San Juan Capistrano. UNLV art prof Robert Tracy, on the other hand, finds it “open, accessible and inextricably humanistic. What more would you want for a library!”
LIED LIBRARY
On the UNLV campus
The “soaring openness and honesty” of this 2001 building by Pugsley Simpson Coulter Architects “bequeaths to the user an enlightened spiritual dimension,” Tracy says — “a spatial development that enables one’s thirst for knowledge within this sanctuary of preserved ideas.” Monumental in form, yet articulate in its details, “it creates a sense of place within the university setting,” Strain says.
LAS VEGAS LIBRARY
833 Las Vegas Blvd. N.
Designed by Southwestern starchitect Antoine Predock, this was the valley’s first (1990) high-style library. It still holds up. “Predock demonstrated a new way to think about the history of a site,” Strain says — by not wiping the slate clean. A water element in the design refers to a stream that actually flowed there. The building’s stone and stylized desertlike forms anchor it here. “This project established a sense of place for this valley, unlike any to that point,” Strain says.