Library Buildings around the World

The brief was to incorporate the college’s existing library collection and provide an extensive new IT facility within the existing
building on campus. The design, a simple plan arrangement, was developed to minimise intervention with the original building. This
was achieved by stripping out all existing non-structural partitions to the ground and first floor, unifying the interior space. The plan
kept the office administration and IT facilities to the back of the ground floor plan, allowing the reception and magazine display
areas to take advantage of the south façade. An existing double height space was retained linking the now opened ground and first
floor spaces. A new staircase was inserted into this space linking the reception to the main library area at first floor. The ground
floor brick panels along the extent of the open library shelving area and those to the double height space were removed. These were
replaced with glazed panels incorporating the college logo as graphics to the glass. Again, the insertion of the glazing formed a visual
link between the ground floor and first floor library space. The simple move of opening and linking up the ground and first floor
plans together has provided a flexible learning space which is used for many varying activities from quiet study to fashion crits,
exhibitions and film sets. (Allford)
Allies and Morrison, London – UK
http://www.alliesandmorrison.co.uk
Libraries:
Girton College Library and Archive, Cambridge - UK 2005
Awards:
RIBA Award 2006
Built to house the College’s growing collection of women's papers and rare books, the Girton Archive is designed to achieve the
highest levels of environmental stability with minimum energy use. The south elevation is detailed as a garden wall, its brickwork
punctuated by the main reading room window. The warm red brickwork and distinctive terracotta shading screen are a direct
response to the materials of the library and chapel on either side. In connecting with the existing library, the new building forms a
calm inner courtyard, continuing the sequence of enclosed garden spaces that have characterised the College since its foundation.
(Allies)
Alsop Partner Architects, London – UK
http://www.alsoparchitects.com
Libraries:
THE PUBLIC, West Bromwich – UK 2005 – 2008
₤ 52.000.000, Total Area: 9,274 square meters
Awards:
MIPIM Future Project Prizes 2003
Literature :
Powell, Kenneth, Mel Gooding, Will Alsop: 1990 – 2000: book 2
Laurence King Publishing 2002
Contained within a simple rectilinear form, The Public was conceived as a “Box of Delights” offering a wide variety of spaces, forms,
angles, curves, surfaces, vistas and atmospheres. Located at the heart of the new town center for West Bromwich the building, with
its large doors and through-routes, is an extension of the public town square. The box envelope is punctured by a scattering of
“jellybean” shaped windows that pierce the sides of the aluminium cladding. Inside, simplicity of form gives way to complexity, with
rugged, multi-faceted or curved forms appearing to balloon into the space, sitting on, or suspended from a table structure, with lifts
cutting past them and a wandering, large-scale ramp linking the spaces. These forms are containers for the many different functions
in the building. There are, for example, “Pods” for displaying art, as well as a huge “Sock” containing two large galleries, an events
space “Rock” and a “Pebble.” At the top of the building, suspended from the roof, a series of “Lily-Pads” – dish-shaped floors with
brightly coloured interiors – will house creative workspaces. In places, these structures break through the external shell of the
building. The “Pebble” is clad externally in the same stainless steel cladding used internally. The Theater, contained within the
“Rock,” is designed to serve the local community by accommodating a wide variety of functions. Gallery visitors arrive at level 3 at
the edge of an informal cluster of tubular steel trees which provide an introduction to the delights of the Galley experience.
The trees, designed by Ben Kelly Design, incorporate a mass of displays, lights, projectors, input terminals and decorative panels.
After passing through the trees visitors arrive at the “Sock,” a black sculptural form rising through three stories and dominating the
North East end of the building. This accommodates the two temporary exhibition galleries - a white single story room at Level 3 and
black two story room at Level 1. The overall interior of The Public was designed as a bioclimatic space. The “Pod” structures make
it possible to target energy into spaces where people gather, thus allowing a high degree of energy efficiency. Natural ventilation is
used where possible.
Peckham Library and Media Centre - London Borough of Southwark - UK 1999
₤ 4.500.000
Awards:
2001 AIA London Chapter Design Award for Best Building
2001 Civic Trust Award
2001 BCIA Award
2000 RIBA Stirling Prize – Building of the year
The public library at Peckham, south London, completed late in 1999, is part of a concerted programme of regeneration and
community growth for this part of the borough of Southwark and forms one element in a new public square. Alsop´s architectural
approach responds to, and interacts with, a client brief which seeks to redefine the role of the library in the local community. After
the practice´s appointment (through a process of competitive interview), Alsop launched an intense dialoge with the community to
discover what sort of building Peckham´s inhabitants wanted. Different groups who would eventually use the building; schools,
disabled forums, inhabitants of Peckham, were consulted at design workshops. The result was a striking example of the new
community architecture. Eschewing the idea of a library as astatic and somewhat rarefied preserve of a accumulated knoeledge,
wisdom and information, the Peckham model proposes that the 21 st century library should reach out to the community, encourage
access to knowledge and embrace the diversity of the local population. Alsop´s first major building in London, the Peckham Library
brings together a number of themes and ideas which have long preoccupied the practice. Most obviously, there is the conviction that
6