“Post-Consumer Inconvenient Farm Buildings in an Urban Setting” – A Barn to a Library.
This 5th year thesis project explores the premise above in the design of a Community Library on the Hackney, De Beauvoir Estate on Regents Canal, London. Furthermore, the project explores what a contemporary library can be outside of modern technology: a social hub, a workplace, a place to celebrate knowledge and a place to strengthen communities – ‘A People’s Palace’, Christoph Grafe, 2014. The project is founded upon the concept of main library form/space wrapped by an ‘armature’ of subsidiary library functions. The project uses the study and design of a farm building (a stables) in the first term as the project’s tectonic foundation, to explore the architectural, and environmental relevance of rudimentary construction to the complexities of urban construction. As a result, the project uses a barn form at its centre. This ‘barn’ is held up by a ridge beam between two thick masonry walls of vernacular brickwork, from which the rest of the scheme spreads and articulates. The project catches indirect light in the main library with a clerestory window above upper and lower galleries of bookshelves that reference the hay lofts of a barn. The project seeks to integrate the demographics of the commuters along the canal towpath with that of the De Beauvoir Estate Park, to function as both a local and estate library. This is done with the help of a public footpath that bends back on itself to the east to the towpath level, in the form of a ramp, holding a public amphitheater of seating, opposite a café. Inside, the project makes use of a thick inhabited wall to house the books and workspace bays to create undivided internal spaces for public events. The building’s façade and form make reference to the historic fronting of industrial warehouses to the canal. In doing so, it creates further public realm between gable facades, in the form of a courtyard lined by timber facades.
