The Design and Construction of the British Library

Citation

Day, A. (1999), "The Design and Construction of the British Library", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 95-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.2.95.9

Faced in these columns with a book, written by a professional architect, which is intended for “anyone interested in modern architecture”, a mere librarian is wise to watch where he is treading very carefully, even though, in this case, it has an obvious interest for all members of the library and information profession. In fact, after a cover to cover reading, at one sitting, your reviewer cannot recall the word “librarian” appearing even once. This is not to say that Colin St John Wilson, awarded a knighthood for services to architecture in the 1998 New Year’s honours list, is unaware of library operations – far from it he believes that when selected at a competitive interview to design a new national library in 1962, along with Professor Sir Leslie Martin, it was largely because of the experience they had gained when building three libraries for Oxford University. At this remove we can only admire the prescience of the Chairman of the Selection Committee, who muttered, “this job may take quite a long time… a hooded but steely eye seemed to be calculating the odds on my chances of attaining the necessary longevity… That was 36 years ago and it is the only comment upon the Library that has held unchallengeably true ever since.”

Writing with an indomitable spirit and vision, and transparently unbowed or defeated by years of uninformed criticism from the Gerald Kaufman/David Mellor/HRH school of architecture, Wilson arranges his account in three main sections. The Historical Background, aptly described as “the 30 years’ war”, outlines the early years, 1962‐1978, when the Trustees of the British Museum set out to implement the proposal to relocate the British Museum Library and Department of Prints and Drawings on land to the south of the Museum, between Great Russell Street and Bloomsbury Way, put forward in the 1951 County of London Plan. “The original design had a certain grand simplicity, square in plan and symmetrical about the N‐W/S‐E diagonal but it would have afforded little opportunity to take aboard any change and none to allow for growth.” Incidentally, he notes that at the time there was no protest against the proposal to evacuate the Round Reading Room. The first real spanner in the works was the emergence of the concept of a single national library following the publication of The Report of The National Libraries Committee in June 1969 which led to Wilson being commissioned to explore the possibility of uniting the Humanities collections of the British Museum Library with the National Reference Library of Science and Invention (comprising the former Patent Office Library and the BML’s scientific collections) on the Bloomsbury site, thus doubling the accommodation required. Confronted by local authority opposition, and a stepped‐up conservationist campaign to retain Bloomsbury’s so‐called village ambience, the Government turned its eyes to the site vacated by British Railways at Somerstown, St Pancras. The consequences of this decision surely need no elaboration here.

Wilson’s second section, Design Method, includes such topics as the influence exerted on him by the English Free School of architecture, the first “major architectural innovation of international impact to originate in Britain”, with its “free asymmetries of an organic nature”, the tradition of modernism, his working method of concentrating on “the desires and necessities”, listed by the architects and a planning group, and which governed the library’s space and environmental standards, the layout of the reading rooms, etc. In truth, this section is, in places, heavy going for readers with no architectural knowledge, but Growth and Change is more reader friendly as it tracks the practical difficulties of being forced to build the new library in phases as money became available: “an anatomy was … evolved that would provide a core building containing a basic minimum of each type of readership at the southern (Euston Road) end of the site, and would allow for the expansion northward in a consistent way – the humanities on the western, and the sciences on the eastern, flank of the site”. What happened then, of course, was that Phase 1 of the original three‐phase scheme was itself broken down into three sub‐phases, “to match what can at best be called a cautious commitment to the furtherance of the project”. This method of funding might conceivably commend itself to the Treasury, but it was certainly no way to build a new national library. Wilson closes this second section with symbolic form, the public image of the Library’s architecture. Laymen and librarians alike will have to take on trust that “the sub‐plot of metaphor and allusions” represents “the very rich and diverse language of Modernism … imbued with the historical sense of continuity and the practice of allusion rather than the clean slate of Modernismus” which denied all connection to the past.

Elements of the Building, the longest section, inspects in turn the restrictions on the design of the library imposed by its site, the function and purpose of the piazza, the crucial importance of the entrance hall as a guide to visitors and in allowing easy access to the reading rooms to students and researchers, the amenities for readers, staff and the general public, the diverse ways of meeting different patterns of use in the reading rooms, the character of the public exhibition galleries, the Conference Centre facilities, the operational and environmental parameters when designing staff work areas, the storage areas below ground and the book distribution system, the works of art incorporated in the design of the building, and details of its construction and mechanical engineering.

Edmund Burke’s apothegm, “those who would carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults and worst of all the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs”, is the motto Wilson selects for his postscript. In his 36 years involvement he has experienced all of these and no doubt, if pressed, he could name his detractors and release long pent up feelings of bitterness and betrayal. But he prefers to let his design and sumptuous new building answer for him. At a genuinely moderate price, this superbly illustrated book will surely be a best‐seller in the Library’s ground floor bookshop. It breathes life and colour into a magnificent interior undreamt of by those who pass by on the Euston Road.