Should I stay or should I go?

The image above (taken by hartlandmartin on flickr) is of Birmingham’s Central library, a somewhat iconic feature of the city centre, built in 1974 and designed by native architect John Madin.  There’s quite a lot on the building on Wikipedia covering it’s Brutalist style and position as one of the cities Modernist buildings.

 

I was in Birmingham a few weeks ago for urban design work with UCL and got aquatinted with it up-close-and-personal – and I am confused.  I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.  On one hand it joins a collection of 1960’s and 1970’s Brutalist/Modernist buildings that are, quite simply, starting to look good in their dystopian, Orwellian historical context.  On the other hand, by its nature, it does just seem ugly.

 

I think the key is context.  Whilst it might need some better maintenance and some additional design work perhaps the problem isn’t the building but how it sits. At the moment, if I were to highlight 2 main problems they would be with the spaces around the library: 1) the entire area is devoid of greenery and 2) there is no legibility.  If I imagine the library shrouded in all new green infrastructure, mainly some grass, some flowers… some revitalising landscape architecture around it -  it becomes rather appealing.  This doesn’t distract from the slight ‘problem’ of the buildings scale – nor is ‘greenery’ the only solution - but it would be a big start. In terms of legibility, the ground floor of the library already forms a rather poor pedestrian link between two of the cities main central squares. The solution to this legibility problem according to Birmingham City Council? Demolish the old library!

 

Except, maybe they won’t. One moment BD are telling us it’s going to be listed, and the next moment, planning daily are saying it isn’t. So maybe they will.  I can’t help but think that it would be a little sad to see it go – it certainly has a quality.  Perhaps the other issue is use... the way in which the library interacts with it’s users and it’s surroundings… not just in terms of design but in people actually engaging with the building.  There just seems to be no interface between the physical elements of library and its users. No art, no cultural programming… in fact never mind that, no nothing.  People seem to respond to it almost as if it were a brick wall.

 

No wonder people seem not entirely sure what to do with it - reaction appears divided into love and hate.  There is Prince Charles commenting the library as ‘‘looking more like a place for burning books, than keeping them’’ on one hand, and, Jonathan Glancey commenting this on the other:

 

‘’The great inverted ziggurat of Birmingham, and its 30 miles of bookshelves .... owes its curious profile to US precedent, not to commercial design. Its architect, John Madin, a home-grown talent, based its design on that of Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles's Boston City Hall (1963-68). It has real presence, and it is not hard to imagine it being transformed, with the help of sympathetic and imaginative architects, artists and designers, into a popular hub of fresh cultural activity’’.

 

I can’t help but feel there’s a little case of wrong place wrong time… with emphasis on the place… watch this space.