Library Buildings around the World

Farrells (Terry Farrell), London, Edinburgh – UK
http://www.terryfarrell.co.uk
Libraries:
British Library Strategic Vision Masterplan – UK 2009
Following a rigorous selection process, the British Library has appointed Farrells to lead a strategic master planning team for its 9
acre site at St Pancras, London. Consultant teams were asked to submit proposals to work with the Library on a Master Plan for the
future development of the entire site to support the Library’s future strategy and plans in a changing, and increasingly digital,
world.
Farrells commenced working on the Master Plan in April 2009 and with a framework vision for the site presented to the British
Library Board in October 2009.
Sir Terry Farrell said: “It is a privilege to have been appointed as strategic master planner to the British Library. The British
Library is one of this country’s greatest institutions and I am delighted to work with the Library to ensure it makes the most of the
changing cultural and academic environment.” (Farrells)
FAT Fashion Architecture Taste, London – UK
http://fashionarchitecture.com
Libraries:
Bentley Library, Walsall – UK in design
FAT beat off competition from over 70 submissions to win this RIBA competition in March 2008. We are now working closely with
Walsall Council, the stakeholders and user groups to develop our proposals for the new community library and nursery in Bentley.
Hopefully the planning application will be submitted in the summer of this year. The 630sqm single storey building sits on a brown
field site, the site of the former library, in the heart of suburban Bentley. There are two vertical elements that express the dual
functions of the building. These also relate to the tower of the nearby community Church and frame views of the local landmark, the
Cairn, which sits atop the adjacent hillock. The library and proposed study centre are arranged around a plinth accessible from the
main street. The idea is that the combination of the area? principle community buildings will provide a new civic focus for Bentley.
The masterplan for the site also includes: car parking, the nursery? outside play area and a new playground.
Thornton Heath Library, Borough of Croydon, London – UK 2009
Gross external floor area 875m2, Total cost £1.5 million, Cost per m2 £1,714, Client London Borough of Croydon
Architects Journal, 16 September, 2010 | By Rory Olcayto :
‘Thornton Heath has a desperate kind of mid-19th-century artisan character,’ states Pevsner’s Buildings of England series, adding
that there is little to enjoy in this ‘relentless suburban sprawl’. Walking along the shambolic, piecemeal Brigstock Road, past the
‘Best Hand Car Wash in the UK’, the Cheap and Cheerful furniture store and the Braids ‘R’ Us beauty salon, you can see why
Pevsner finds this Croydon suburb so hard to like. Despite a solid Victorian and 1920s townscape, which mixes terraces with
commercial yards and semi-detached villas, it’s a crazy jumble: road signs, shopfronts, street lamps and cars - hundreds and
hundreds of cars. A few minutes’ walk westwards from the railway station, the road widens, and there is a clear view of something at
odds with Pevsner’s observations: a striking, graphic, gleaming white pavilion, fixed to the front of a Edwardian block and set
alongside a very busy bus stop. Its function is spelled out in large freestanding three-dimensional letters, in case you’re not sure what
lies inside. Welcome to FAT’s £1.5 million revamp of the local Carnegie library. London-based practice FAT makes provocative
architecture that invites you to think about what you’re looking at. Its buildings have a dreamy, prosaic quality that offends or
delights depending on your taste. In the 2002 book Fame and Architecture, founding director Sean Griffiths says FAT’s work
‘makes references to “high” architecture but it also has readings accessible to others’. That might explain why director and cofounder
Sam Jacob described the practice’s magnificent Heerlijkheid Hoogvliet community building in the Netherlands (AJ
06.11.08) as ‘not Arcadia, but an imaginary Arcadia’, when much of it resembles the landscape of a Nintendo videogame.
Thornton Heath Library, too, has two (and perhaps more) personalities. The cast concrete letters have a cartoonish feel, as if the
whole building is a blown-up board-game piece, but, explains Charles Holland, the director who led the project, they also reference
the sculptural grandeur of neo-classical civic facades. FAT’s intervention here is really quite rude: it nearly swallows the Edwardian
facade, including the heraldic stone frieze around an old doorway it’s supposed to be nodding and winking at. It’s odd, then, that the
result is a massive improvement, although the confident proportions and materiality of FAT’s new-build are very clear to see.
Given the complexity and craft FAT invests in its projects, Croydon Council should be applauded for granting the firm, funded by a
£1.37 million Big Lottery grant, its first civic project in Britain. The brief was to expand the existing facility to offer a lending
library, a reading area and café, a homework space, computers, a children’s library and community meeting rooms. A three-month
public consultation gathered over 1,000 local comments, and included a display in a nearby Tesco, drop-in sessions, talks and school
visits. This led to further demands: better usability, a wider community role, access to the garden and a contemporary entrance
pavilion of ‘outstanding architectural quality’. In October 2007, the Big Lottery grant was awarded. Construction began in June last
year and the building was completed this July. Much of the refurbished library’s success is due to how it works with the
neighbourhood. The street pattern in the immediate vicinity is weak. The building is located on a section of Brigstock Road that is
largely lined with low-rise residential properties, many of which, like the library, are set back from the pavement, with some behind
planted lawns. FAT’s solution comes courtesy of CABE: imagine the library as the ‘living room of the city’. The entrance pavilion,
with its stepped foundation, café and pushed-forward footprint, is a clear embodiment of this idea. It looks especially good when a
double-decker bus pulls up alongside it, something FAT clearly thought about (its design and access statement includes a render of
this very scene). But there is considerably more to this project than the pavilion’s imaginative urbanism. The library is now fully
accessible and a number of fine original architectural features, including timber mouldings around the octagon at the plan’s centre,
have been rescued from burial under previous alterations. All furniture is designed by FAT and a pair of additional two-storey wings
increase floor space and improve circulation. A stair tower and lift in the north-east corner of the plan provide public access to a
back garden. New doors, fitted in extended window openings, lead out to a terrace adjoining the refurbished children’s library. To
the front of the lower-ground floor, uninhabitable storage space has been remodelled to create meeting and activity rooms, and staff
accommodation with an IT area above occupies the south-east extension. These towers have a utilitarian aesthetic. They are clad in
cement fibre panels - a surprise given the luxurious frontage of polished white concrete and its mix of dolomite fines. Nevertheless,
the right choices have been made about where to spend money. Outside, the access ramp, like all access ramps, is the one sore point.
FAT was right to spend money here, making it both sculptural and integral, but the polished concrete deck and toughened glass
balustrade has a commercial aesthetic that feels misplaced. This is one architectural element that is crying out for a fresh
perspective. And yet, standing beneath the octagon and looking south-west into the pavilion café, you sense that one room is part
31