mecanoo architects: library of birmingham celebrates top out

guess who got a new circle template for Christmas!

dbkii   09.16.11

I wanted to sail past dbkii’s comments but my God, here you are yet again commenting about an article posted on designboom with your usual stunning foresight and appreciation! This time about a building in a city I am pretty sure you have never visited.

I studied Architecture in Birmingham and have always had a soft spot for the UK’s second largest city, a city which gets a seriously rough ride, admittedly some of it even self inflicted, some of it deserved but most of it not.

When Mecanoo won the competition to design a new library in central Birmingham I was both excited and dismayed.

I was excited as Birmingham deserves, and needs, all the quality architecture it can get. In this case the City was commissioning intelligent and respected foreign architects to design an important civic building.

Whilst being dismayed for several reasons, the first being that slightly sinking felling of ‘here we go again’ as Birmingham City Council carry out yet another gross act of vandalism. This point having been by Andy Foster in his 2005 re-write of Pevsner’s guide, warning that it would “be tragic if history repeats itself and the building is destroyed".

Luckily the replacement, John Madden's (1969-1974) Central Library, turned out to be a magnificent piece of British Brutalism, being designed loosely based on Boston City Hall. Yet over the years the fabric of the building was neglected and when I was a student there the external ground floor courtyard was internalised and bastardised in 1989 into a gross, camp food court (think Baskin ‘n Robbins pink neon and Maccy D’s). Yet despite this the City council is still very proud of the fact that the current library will remain open right up to demolition and is the city's busiest public building, attracting over 5,000 visitors a day.

The third and final worry was the obvious reuse by Mecanoo of the ring decorative motif. Just before the announcement of their win, they had publicised another project, which, well lets be honest, looked exactly the same.

Strangely and I think pleasingly the ring motif actually ties the building back to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. A ‘pop’ building designed by Graham Winteringham and Keith Williams Architects and opened in the 1971 and to which the new library is actually going to be joined at the hip. I am also glad that the rather bad, glazed extension of the 90s has also been swollowed up in the development.

Birmingham deserves better and I hope that the new Library is not just a great piece of urban planning and good architecture but a fantastic library for the city. I also hope that someone in the council has vision to realise that the old Central Library does not need to be bulldozed for yet more mediocre office developments, but in the hands of the right architects could be transformed in something else something spectacular and an local, national and even international asset. Birmingham is a young city and needs to respect what little built heritage is has left. It can do it, because there are many examples in the Jewellery Quarter, Glen Howells sensitively and commercially reinvented the Rotunda and Associated Architects dramatically improved the public and back of house of the Hippodrome Theatre.

dextersdragon   09.18.11

nailed it. I too studied design at Birmingham. I'm am very excited by the cities regeneration. God knows it deserves it.P

Phil   09.22.11