Description
Designed by Alsop + Störmer Architects, the Peckham Library and Media Centre with its 2.1 m high stainless steel letters spelling “LIBRARY” is identified by its bold form, vibrant color and a heroic orange rooftop protuberance. The library is an inverted L with a generous entry plaza created by an enormous overhanging volume resting on spindly posts. With its gravity-defying form and unique juxtaposition of color and materials, the library is a bold and quirky structure that redefines “the role of the library in the local community”.
Peckham, in the borough of Southwark, is a dense, urban district of South London marked by crime and gang violence. Located in a highly diverse area, the ethnic make-up of this working class community includes Africans (more than one third of the population), Caribbeans, Asians, Irish and Bangladeshi. The library project was completed in 2000 as part of a £290 million urban renewal and regeneration program, which also included new low-rise housing and a health center. The library and its plaza serve as an informal connector between the new programs, extending the limits of Peckham Square.
The inverted L-shaped volume is divided into the lending library and administrative services. Administrative services include information equipment, a social meeting space and a media center that are housed in the five-story linear bar, the vertical portion of the inverted “L”. The lending library occupies the two-story horizontal volume that hovers 12 m above the plaza, supported on 12 slender, skewed columns. This double-height space serves both as reading room and the stacks for 60,000 volumes. While prototypical library elements of shelves, tables and chairs are present, the reading room is dominated by the presence of three enormous “pods”, supported on legs, that float above the stacks. Formed from curved timber ribs and structural plywood, each pod serves a unique function: a children’s room, a meeting place and a special collection of Afro-Caribbean literature.
The exterior is characterized by a panoply of shapes, textures and color. Seamed, horizontal pre-patinated copper cladding defines the east and west facades as well as the overhanging volume. The north and entry facades are glazed; the north side characterized by windows of intense colors and the entry by a sheet of undulating metal mesh suspended from the glass and soffit.
The wit and seeming irreverence of the library belies the social mission of Alsop’s first major building in London. Its unconventional use of form, materials and color is not only lighthearted but is, in fact, an embrace of civic responsibility. The institution of the library is reinterpreted through architectural language, transforming the traditional and the staid to the whimsical and fun. In doing so, the library is made accessible to a user population of immigrants and attractive to children and teens. This is best illustrated by the architectural language of the “pod”, which gives life and prominence to the Afro-Caribbean Collection. The exuberant use of colored glass facades is not simply decorative but a part of an energy strategy to provide natural light and natural ventilation. These ethics are best exemplified by the signature orange “beret” or “tongue” protruding from the roof inviting speculation while it provides shade for the ventilation shafts located on the south side.
With almost half a million annual visitors, the Peckham Library and Media Centre is the busiest of Southwark’s libraries. It is the recipient of numerous awards, from the prestigious RIBA Stirling Award (2000) for the best building in Britain to the Civic Trust Award in 2001 for excellence in public architecture. This array of prizes recognizes the breadth of this design, which simultaneously addresses issues of urban intervention, library design and community renewal. In this project, Alsop demonstrates the far-reaching power of architecture.
Drawings
Site plan
Ground floor
Second floor
Fourth floor
Fifth floor
Sections
Section through one of the three “pods”
Photos
View of the entry plaza at night
View of third floor stacks with pods beyond
Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.