What is the Arabian Library?
Some buildings in north Scottsdale were designed to be photographed from a golf cart. This one is a public library, open to anyone for free, and it’s better than most of them.
The Arabian Library is a 20,875-square-foot branch of the Scottsdale Public Library at McDowell Mountain Ranch Road and Thompson Peak Parkway. It opened on September 20, 2007. The architects, Richärd + Bauer of Phoenix, built it around one idea, the slot canyon. You go in through a narrow slot of weathered steel plate whose walls lean over your head, the way sandstone does in the canyons of northern Arizona. The slot opens into a court with a single tree and a thin line of water. Beyond that is a tall reading room lined in perforated wood and lit from high ledges. The roof, by the architects’ description, is earth and stone lifted off the desert floor and planted with native vegetation.
It is the most decorated building in this part of town. It won a 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Award, a national honor, plus 2008 Honor Awards from AIA Arizona and the AIA Western Mountain Region and the 2008 IIDA/Metropolis Smart Environments Award. In 2023 Architectural Digest put it among the world’s 15 most futuristic libraries. It also has two pieces of public art worth stopping for, one built into the walls and one standing outside.
How to visit
Hours and access. As of fall 2026 the building is open Monday–Thursday 9 a.m.–7 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday 1–5 p.m., and the drive-up window keeps slightly shorter hours. All Scottsdale libraries close on city library holidays and staff days, which are posted on the library’s locations page. It’s free.
Walk it in the order the architects intended.
- The approach. From the parking lot, notice how the roof seems to rise out of the ground. That’s the lifted desert floor in the architects’ concept.
- The slot. Walk the entry slowly. The rusted steel walls lean overhead and fall away from the path. Richärd + Bauer meant them to echo terra-cotta canyon stone.
- The court. A single tree and a thread of water that pools at the low edge stand in for a canyon bottom. The architects designed the court as a gathering space for library and meeting-room events.
- The reading room. Look up. A series of ledges hides clerestory windows that bring daylight into the middle of the room. The walls are perforated hardboard over recycled-cotton insulation, which is why a room this tall is so quiet.
Find the art.
- Desert Tracery (Norie Sato, 2007) isn’t a separate object. Sato worked inside the architects’ team, and her steel and glass elements are part of the building. The imagery is the skeleton of a prickly pear cactus, the inner network that holds the plant up and feeds it. Look closely at the glass and you’ll find printed Braille, Greek and genetic code in the images, Sato’s reference to the systems that carry knowledge. Her artist statement says the imagery invites us to “look more closely.”
- Allurement of a Journey (Kenji Umeda, 1980) is a pink Portuguese marble sculpture, a memorial to Lew Davis, the Jerome-born painter many called the “Dean of Arizona Artists.” It stood at the Civic Center until Scottsdale Public Art moved it here in 2021. Our Civic Center sculpture field guide covers the works still downtown.
Make an afternoon of the corner. McDowell Mountain Ranch Park and its aquatic center share the intersection. Norie Sato also made Cactus Mirage (2007), the breeze-driven acrylic wall on the pool deck, so you can see two of her works within a few hundred yards of each other. For the desert itself, the Quartz Trailhead into the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is just east along McDowell Mountain Ranch Road. A good summer plan is to hike at dawn and come to the library once the heat sets in.
From a school library to a landmark
The Arabian branch didn’t start as a landmark. It opened in 1996 as a shared-use library on the campus of Desert Canyon Elementary and Middle Schools, a common arrangement for a fast-growing master-planned area that had more children than public buildings. (The ALA’s award page calls the old facility the shared-use library at “Desert Arroyo Middle School.” Wikipedia’s account places it with the Desert Canyon schools.) As McDowell Mountain Ranch filled in, the city decided to build a freestanding branch across the street, part of the same civic corner as the park and aquatic center.
The design was being honored before construction started. The unbuilt scheme won a 2005 AIA Western Mountain Region citation and 2006 “On the Boards” honors from the ALA/IIDA and the IIDA Southwest chapter. Redden Construction built it on a design-bid-build contract for about $7.4 million, finishing in August 2007. The design team was James E. Richard (designer and principal in charge), Kelly Bauer (project manager and interiors), Steve Kennedy (project architect), Ben Perrone and Stacey Crumbaker, with Kunka Engineering, OMB Electrical Engineers, Caruso Turley Scott (structural), PKLAND Engineering (civil), EGroup (landscape) and artist Norie Sato.
What the architects were after
Richärd + Bauer’s own description of the project starts with geology. Slot canyons, they wrote, were cut over millennia by “ever-patient threads of water,” with hard stone forming sharp vertical slivers and soft stone opening into wider crevasses. The building tries to reproduce that experience of being pressed between walls and then released to the sky. The earthen roof is “thrust from the desert floor, taking with it the native grasses, shrub and stone texture.” The weathered steel walls hold it up. Two narrow “canyon courts” on the west and south let the lounge areas spill outside.
The practical side is just as deliberate. A raised floor carries mechanical, electrical and data lines so the library can rearrange itself as technology changes. Air stratification keeps cooled air down where people are and lets the tall volumes stay warmer above. The library’s program, by the architects’ account, borrowed from contemporary bookstores, with popular collections up front and café and bookstore elements. The teen space, called Teen Square in the award listing, won its own IIDA Southwest PRIDE award in 2008. The ALA’s citation highlighted the acoustics: the perforated wood lining lets people read, study and meet in small groups without noise spilling between zones.
The two sources disagree on certification. The library lists the building as LEED Silver, while the architects’ project sheet says LEED Certified. The library’s figure is the more recent and is the one to use.
The awards, in full
For the record, the architects list these honors:
- 2005 AIA Western Mountain Region citation (unbuilt)
- 2006 ALA/IIDA Honor, On the Boards
- 2006 IIDA Southwest Chapter PRIDE Award, On the Boards
- 2008 ALA/IIDA Honor, public libraries 30,000 square feet and smaller
- 2008 IIDA/Metropolis Smart Environments Award
- 2008 IIDA Southwest PRIDE Awards for public facility and for single space (Teen Square)
- 2008 Valley Forward Environmental Design merit award
- 2008 AIA Arizona Honor Award
- 2008 AIA Western Mountain Region Honor Award
- 2008 AIA/IIDA Best of Competition
- 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Award, one of eight recipients that year
In 2023 Architectural Digest added it to its list of the world’s 15 most futuristic libraries.
The memorial that moved north
Allurement of a Journey is older than the library by twenty-seven years. Kenji Umeda (1948–2019) was born in Miyazaki, Japan, studied at Kettle’s Yard at Cambridge and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, and lived in Phoenix while keeping a studio in Carrara near his stone. Patrons and Friends of Lew Davis commissioned the sculpture, completed in 1980, as a memorial to the painter, who was born in Jerome in 1910 and was widely regarded as the dean of Arizona artists. Scottsdale Public Art describes the marble as “a combination of skyward energy and earthbound balance.” It stood at the Civic Center until it was moved to the Arabian Library grounds in 2021.
Why it matters
Most of Scottsdale’s architectural reputation rests on private buildings: Taliesin West, resorts and custom houses you see from the road. The Arabian Library is the strongest argument that the city can commission public buildings at the same level. It’s a branch library in a subdivision-era neighborhood that took the desert as seriously as Wright did and is open to anyone with an afternoon free. Go when it’s 112 degrees outside.