Project Name: Redmond Library

Location: Redmond, Oregon, United States

Design Team: Miller Hull Partnership

Floor Area: 40,000 ft² (3,716 m²)

Year of Completion: 2025

Photography: Lara Swimmer Photography

Design Features: Located in the heart of downtown Redmond, Oregon, the new Redmond Library by The Miller Hull Partnership and local practice Steele Associates Architects, commissioned by Deschutes Public Library, is one of the most considered works of civic architecture to emerge from the United States in 2025. The two-storey mass timber building, totalling 3,716 square metres, more than doubles the footprint of its predecessor and fundamentally redefines what a public library can be as a piece of urban infrastructure.

Architecturally, the design navigates the relationship between historical context and contemporary civic identity with precision. A brick volume on the north elevation references the material language of Redmond's historic downtown and the adjacent City Hall, while a contrasting glass and metal-clad southern facade draws natural light deep into the interior and frames views of the surrounding mountains. A broad unifying roof supports a photovoltaic array sized to meet 100 per cent of the building's annual energy consumption, making it a certified net-zero energy building operating on an entirely all-electric system.

The interior is anchored by exposed mass timber throughout — columns, beams, and ceilings that lend the space a warmth unusual in civic building typologies. In a technically inventive decision, the design team employed acoustic dowel-laminated timber for the ceiling plane, allowing the structural wood to remain visually exposed without additional acoustic treatment, achieving a rare unity of structural honesty and spatial refinement. A central staircase connects the two floors and serves as the experiential heart of the building, surmounted by a site-specific suspended sculpture by Pacific Northwest artist John Grade, inspired by the cellular geometry of Central Oregon sagebrush and the obsidian flows of the Newberry Caldera.

Sustainability is embedded at every scale of the project. Concrete use was deliberately minimised across the structure, and in collaboration with the concrete supplier, low-impact mixes were selected, reducing the material's global warming potential by 30 per cent. At the urban scale, a generous civic plaza and covered porch extend the library's public character to the street edge, functioning as an outdoor living room for the wider community and supporting programming, informal gathering, and intergenerational use across all seasons.

Design Team: Founded in 1977 by David Miller and Robert Hull, two architects whose design sensibilities were profoundly shaped by their shared experience in the Peace Corps and their enduring engagement with the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, The Miller Hull Partnership has grown over nearly five decades into one of the most consistently recognised architecture firms on the West Coast of the United States. The firm operates across studios in Seattle and San Diego, and is currently led by a distinguished partnership including Brian Court, Ben Dalton, Rob Misel, Sian Roberts, and Scott Wolf.

Miller Hull has established a defining body of work across civic, educational, cultural, and residential architecture, earning multiple AIA National Honor Awards and receiving the AIA National Architecture Firm Award in 2003 — the highest collective recognition in American architectural practice. The firm is particularly celebrated for its rigorous and technically grounded approach to sustainability, with an extensive record of net-zero energy and Living Building Challenge certified projects, and a consistent presence in national rankings for green design leadership.

For the Redmond Library, Miller Hull collaborated closely with local practice Steele Associates Architects and engaged in an extensive multi-round community consultation process, integrating the perspectives of residents across age groups, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences into the architectural programme, encompassing families, seniors, unhoused individuals, LGBTQ+ groups, Latinx community members, outdoor enthusiasts, and arts advocates. The project forms part of a broader system-wide renewal of Deschutes County's library network, for which a shared building controls and specifications framework was developed to ensure cohesive, sustainable, and operationally efficient library infrastructure across the region.