State Library of Queensland, The Corner
State Library of Queensland, The Corner
Client:
State Library of Queensland
Location:
Brisbane, Queensland
Status:
Completed 2026
Contact Person:
Dr Stephen Long
For children visiting the State Library of Queensland, the renewed Corner is a place for learning through play and stories – the starting point for a lifelong journey of discovery.
The library’s innovative literacy program had outgrown its former home within the Zelman Cowen Award-winning library.
Architectus worked with the State Library to reimagine the Corner in a new, more visible location within the library footprint, including direct access to a new facility for parents and carers.
With a larger footprint, the Corner gives the library greater flexibility in programming and more spaces for enriching, open-ended play.
A ‘plaza’ for play
Now accessible from its own front door address – a shady canopy tucked within landscaping on Stanley Place – the Corner functions as an open, indoor ‘plaza’ for play and storytelling, surrounded by smaller reading nooks and a new ‘studio’ for making.
The plaza is reconfigurable via movable soft seating blocks doubling as construction blocks for free play.
Diversity by design
The diverse spaces are designed to provide as many play and social experiences as possible, to prompt neurological development through sensory experience and active play.
The configuration of play cubbies provides settings to spark different types of interactions between kids and their carers, as well as the possibility to curl up with a book, away from the action.
Each miniaturised space is distinct in its materiality and colour, with timbers lightly stained to internalise the play of coloured concrete oxides that characterise the atmospheric existing library.
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Client:
State Library of Queensland
Location:
Brisbane, Queensland
Status:
Completed 2026
Contact Person:
Dr Stephen Long
Key People
Elliot Harvie
Associate
Brisbane
