DAVID ADJAYE WINTER PARK LIBRARY & EVENTS CENTER

Winter Park is one of Florida’s inland cities and is located in an area of small lakes where the climate enabled early settlers to cultivate citrus fruit. It is a largely suburban landscape now, but the site is next to a beautiful park. The planting in the park is not very dense, because it is trying to be European; it is laid out round a lake and there are moments when the trees and the light give you a sense of this older, tropical landscape. It is not actually tropical, but it has that atmosphere—the heat and humidity are still there. Seeing the site, I wanted to bring Winter Park residents to the water and, through the design of our building, suggest a relationship to the underlying geography here.

The library and events center were separate in the brief, but we could have developed them as a single building. This is the approach I took in the design of the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut, where we needed to protect a new open space from the coastal highway. In Winter Park I felt that the tropical nature of the site demanded a looser arrangement that would allow for the in-between. For me, the in-between space was everything—how to create a meaningful outside-inside space connecting the different programmes was a major issue. By expressing the brief in separate forms, we were able to focus our attention on exactly what was happening between them.

Making these external spaces involved moderating the climate—by offering shade or shelter from the rain—and setting up engaging relationships between the building and the site. This was about encouraging a type of public architecture where being outside is not seen as a burden, and people can linger, take a seat and reflect on where they are. In Winter Park we started by developing the site as a low podium, forming a belvedere to the landscape. It separated people and cars, and allowed us to develop the external spaces as part of a clustering strategy in which three cubic forms—suggesting inverted pyramids in section—were positioned relative to one another and the edges of the podium. It was important to avoid railings on the podium, as they can institutionalise a project in a way that undermines its purpose, so we designed something more substantial: an over-scaled balustrade that you can sit on and look back at the composition. I’m quite obsessed with this over-scaled balustrading because I like making plinths.

The cluster strategy allowed me to create the kinds of space we see in medieval towns and cities, where you feel both protected and well connected with your surroundings. Our cluster opens up in the direction of the lake, but on the high street there is a deliberate attempt to make a civic presence. The focus here is on the porte-cochere, which presents the idea of the project to the street—a perfectly symmetrical form that gives you the concept for the other buildings as you drive past the site. Protecting the drop-off point, its arches frame perspective views of the larger buildings, which then appear to step aside to reveal the longer view. For residents who walk through the park, the experience is reversed. They are likely to arrive at the Tiedtke Amphitheater, whose grassy steps soften the appearance of the podium when seen from the park. For them, the porte-cochere only comes into view as they pass between the main buildings.

The programme for the events center called for a grand hall and support facilities for a range of gatherings, from conferences to weddings. At a later stage, the mayor asked us to arrange for the roof terrace to be used as an open air restaurant. Our main priority was to focus on the singularity of the grand hall; we wanted to avoid the ground floor being carved up into separate spaces with corridor access. The strategy we developed involved