Impacted by a strip shopping mall in North Phoenix, the library’s construction and material palette quietly draws from, and (re)presents, the language of its retail neighbors. In the tradition of banks, post offices, courthouses, and city halls of fledgling western frontier towns, whose dignified, yet paper-thin street facades belie their utilitarian construction behind, the Library’s ‘false front’ mediates between its two realities: one of a limited budget, the other of the civic presence expected in a public institution. Completed as will bruder architects ltd.