Library entrance on Centenary Square
Library facade: between skin and cladding
The city’s new library opened to intense media attention just two months ago. Seen on news reports as far away as Brazil, the idea of a large and ambitious new civic project- especially one devoted to the book- caught the imagination. It was, against expectations, a Conservative party project: a former Labour administration had commissioned a Rogers building on a different site and foolishly, the current Labour council leader found a pressing engagement in Lithuania which meant he was absent for the opening celebration. Locals and visitors queued to get in, and its attraction has continued ever since.
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Two months on, the number of people actually using the library is greater than that of those just coming to view. And it works well as a place to find and read books. It’s a building that has an intense core, dominated by a three-storey cylinder of books, off and above which are areas for more books, and for reading and contemplation. Two areas of garden terrace where books can be taken give a new visual relation to the city and landscape beyond- architect Francine Houben has talked of Birmingham’s ‘soft hills’ which no one had noticed before.
View from Library east with terrace and across city centre with Rotunda
The building itself, open and welcoming, forms a kind of landscape or territory that enables the place to be used as an extension of the city’s public space. It provides an inward concentration- the focus on the life of the mind through books- but also frames the city beyond as place of engagement and participation.
In the early days of the Russian revolution, there was much talk of ‘social condensers’: buildings that would enrich a citizen’s life in their city were proposed and sometimes built. More generally, architects often speak of a project being ‘generous’ in adding a social dimension to a building’s brief. In this new Library, the storing, access and reading of books is placed in a remarkable context, providing a building with an important role as a social condenser for the whole city.
In the early days of the Russian revolution, there was much talk of ‘social condensers’: buildings that would enrich a citizen’s life in their city were proposed and sometimes built. More generally, architects often speak of a project being ‘generous’ in adding a social dimension to a building’s brief. In this new Library, the storing, access and reading of books is placed in a remarkable context, providing a building with an important role as a social condenser for the whole city.
View west from Library terrace: Porphyrios building on right, Birmingham Oratory in left centre