The children at Ranui library were behaving beautifully when I poked my head in the door one recent weekday after school.
Despite a lack of parental supervision, there was purpose in the air and a thirst for learning. Some children, maybe intermediate school age, were talking at library-appropriate volumes about "lynda.com", which turns out not to be Wonder Woman's website but an online training provider (access it for free with your library card). Another child, slightly younger, was watching a YouTube video on a library computer about "how to rob five stores without killing!" which, as Grand Theft Auto aims go, is exceptionally endearing.
This library only opened in 2013, after 13 years of inhabiting an inadequate "shoebox" across the road. At its centre is a comfy slouch-couch in front of a gas fireplace — genius. Yet something doesn't feel quite right.
The Jasmax design is full of tall, grey, oppressive walls. The openness of the mezzanine floor is cool rather than welcoming: blunt spikes discourage people from sitting on the half-wall so they won't fall into the children's section below. The neighbouring stairs, flanked on both sides by yards of polished concrete, feel narrow, hard, sombre, restrictive, even prison-like.
So, to an outsider at least, this building feels like a monument imposed, rather than a place the community has been allowed to make their own. The one glorious exception is a large, wonderful portrait of Moana's Maui in the teen section by library assistant Angelina Taungahihifo.