Library Buildings around the World

Scott’s alterations inserted new levels into the hall, breaking up the single grand space, and providing Wright & Wright with a useful
precedent for change. Its design solution proposes both a bold reworking of the Buckler interior plus a new
L-shaped extension, which will stretch along the rear and continue at right angles to the original along the Longwall boundary,
where the edge of the college grounds are marked by a high 15th-century wall. New landscaping adjacent to the extension will create
additional external seating in the quad within a scented garden.
In the Buckler building, Wright & Wright is planning to dig down deeper than Scott’s basement extension to provide space for
servers, book storage and toilets.
In the original main space, the architects will take out Scott’s new levels to reveal the full height of the hall and its windows, and then
add a freestanding, oak-clad intervention rising high into the space like a giant piece of furniture.
This removable steel-framed structure houses three levels of study areas and a new staircase and glass lift. Students can also sit at
tables within the cathedral-like void. All furniture is oak and bespoke.
The practice hopes this structure will give users a greater appreciation of the original building by taking them closer to the splendid
timber-trussed roof and the long windows, which before the Scott alterations were high above the readers’ heads.
“A clear architectural language will be established, distinguishing between old and new, set in a meaningful relationship that will
create spatial tension,” says partner Clare Wright.
At the lower level, the Buckler building will be extended forward within the footprint of a terrace created by Scott to form a new
plinth to the original. This carries on around the Longwall to create a contemporary building in its own right.
Wright&Wright’s intervention uses the whole height of the hall.
The fully accessible entrance will be on the corner, with the existing building to the left and the new reading room opening to the
right. New accommodation will be clad in Clipsham stone, with York paving used for the new stepped landscaping and continuing
inside through the new spaces. It will incorporate two new modest courtyards, positioned in front of gates within the wall. These will
neatly bookend the development.
Views through the new accommodation are important, along with the creation of different types of study space — some secluded,
others open. In the extension, for example, students can either sit at group tables near the garden, or in cosy, top-lit secluded spaces
on the other side of the central book stacks. These have views through to the courtyards.
Alternatively, they can use the separate, square room at the far end with more relaxed seating, or study externally on the wi-fienabled
terraces. The bold new plans are entirely appropriate for the evolving nature of historic Oxford estates, says Wright.
“The college has always changed. They take extraordinary care of historic buildings, but also strive for what’s best now by adding to
the portfolio that’s been built up over five centuries in a sensitive but contemporary manner,” she says.
An archaeological dig has started on the site ahead of the building work. This will be followed by underpinning work to the estate
wall in preparation for construction next year. 20.09.2012 by Pamela Buxton (http://www.bdonline.co,uk)
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – UK 2008
Awards:
RIBA Award 2009
Natural Stone Award 2009
Wood Award 2009
Corpus Christ College is one of the oldest colleges in Cambridge. Centrally located and occupying in an entire block of the historic
city, our task was to transform a former bank hall into a modern library. A new new court was created alongside the library and
now provides offices, accommodation, a bar and brand nw JCR. Listed buildings were carefully restored and new ones finely
detailed. The use of high quality long life materials will help ensure the new buildings last as long as their historic predecessors.
(Whright)
When Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College ran out of undergraduate library space, it engaged Wright & Wright to
remodel a former bank it owns on one of the city’s main streets as the Taylor Library, reports Ellis Woodman. Photos by Peter Cook
and Dennis Gilbert
Founded in 1352 — just a couple of years after a third of the population of Europe had succumbed to the Black Death — Corpus
Christi is one of Cambridge University’s oldest colleges. It is also one of its smallest, a product of the fact that its city centre site has
stubbornly constrained all ambitions towards expansion. In the 20th century, the college established a satellite presence on the far
side of the River Cam, but its principal address remains essentially the product of just two phases of development.
Constructed in uncoursed rubble and still boasting an otherworldly disregard for basic plumbing, the 14th century Old Court is
indeed the oldest court in the city. Alongside it stands the 1823-27 New Court, designed by William Wilkins. Its footprint isn’t so
very much larger than that of the original quad but it is a grander and considerably stiffer proposition.
Representing one of its architect’s rare excursions into gothicism, the scheme draws its detailing from early Tudor sources, but in the
doggedly symmetrical composition of its facades, it betrays Wilkins’ fundamentally classical sensibilities. It is through New Court
that the college is now entered. The chapel lies on axis with the gate house, while the northern and southern flanking ranges are
occupied by the dining hall and library respectively. In fact Wilkins designed two libraries — the Parker Library, which constitutes
one of the world’s most important archives of medieval texts, and the less rarefied undergraduate library on the floor below.
By the late nineties, both had outgrown their existing premises. Studies to test the feasibility of an expansion were undertaken
separately by 5th Studio and by Colin St John Wilson. Both concluded that the best solution would be to fit a new wing within the
garden of the Master’s Lodge. However, the college was resistant to the idea of encroaching on this space, leaving only one option,
one that would prove considerably more involved — and expensive — than constructing a new building.
In the mid-19th century, the college had undertaken a commercial development comprising a Wilkins designed terrace of houses and
an adjoining gothic bank building by Horace Francis, which enjoy a very prominent urban position. The terrace masks the college’s
relationship to Trumpington Street — the road along which most of Cambridge’s oldest colleges are distributed — while the bank
turns the corner into Benet Street, where it looks out to another work by Wilkins, the magnificent screen and gate house of King’s
College.
In the early 20th century, Corpus reclaimed the houses as student accommodation but Francis’s building remained in commercial
use until 2005, when its lease came up for renewal. With this opportunity in sight, the college decided to build a new undergraduate
library within the bank. Expected to provide shelf space for 45,000 books, the new facility would offer more than double the college’s
book-holding capacity. It would also free up the site of the existing undergraduate library, enabling the Parker to be provided with
additional reading rooms and a new secure vault.
While the dividends were clear, the complexity was daunting.
While the dividends were clear, the complexity of what was being proposed was daunting. Not only would the building’s interior
have to be comprehensively remodelled, its orientation would also have to be reversed — the entrance to the city would be closed and
a new one opened onto what at the time was a small service yard, which the bank had shared with the Wilkins terrace and Old
Court.
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