Women’s Library

Housing a significant international collection, the Women’s Library (a part of the Metropolitan University) uses a layout that responds to the client’s requirements for highly accessible and secure private space coupled with the need for stringent environmental control in some areas. The building consists of an exhibition hall, seminar room, educational facilities, reading room, archives, cafe, offices, friends’ room and garden. The most public spaces are on lower floors, with increasing security as one moves up through the building. Servicing requirements, coupled with the need for primary spaces such as the exhibition hall, led to the plan form. This consists of a series of large rooms, one on each floor, framed by two structural cores, which contain the circulation and services. This is set back from the washhouse wall, with ancillary accommodation between old and new. The combined resolution of the structure, environmental control and functions of the building led to a complex section of heavyweight construction.

The spaces intertwine in section so the uniqueness of each of the building’s main functions is reflected architecturally. The spatial manoeuvres within the building are highly complex to reflect this uniqueness. For example the exhibition hall consists of overlapping spatial relationships and axis, while the reading room, a calm, white room is the only symmetrical space in the building. Design ideas are carried through from the strategic design to the smallest details, such as ironmongery and window details. Nine artists worked with the architects, eight of them making staircase panels representing a well – known woman.

At the time of writing, a Law Library (also by Wright & Wright) faced in red brick had just been completed near the Women’s Library. (Both are a part of the London Metropolitan University.)