Birmingham: a tale of two libraries

My family lived within a few miles of Birmingham for three years in the late Eighties, but, for reasons that don't really make sense to me, it seems that we only went into the city centre twice in that time.  I recall spilling UHT milk over my father's suit in a café near Snow Hill station on one of those occasions.  This is perhaps why we did not come back.

So, returning to the place some twenty-five years later, there was almost nothing for me to remember.  I did distantly recognise the Stirling green handrails and globular PoMo lights of Snow Hill (which seems to be a car park with a station attached, rather than the other way round), but nothing of the city itself.

Retaining the charm of the underside of a motorway flyover.

As England's Second City (TM), Birmingham is lucky enough to have its own Pevsner guide, which is a really great book (they all are #fanboy).  This blog here has a great account of the rebuildings of Birmingham, so I wont re-cover any of that.  My interest was in the soon-to-be-demolished Central Library, which the Pevsner describes as a building 'of European importance', although in Culture Minister Margaret Hodge's judgement, there was 'insufficient architectural value' and 'insufficient historic importance' for the building to be listed.  So it should therefore be flattened forthwith, and the land flogged (cf Preston Bus Station).

From 1974, when the library opened, and colours were wrong.

As if often the case with such post-War schemes, little of the original masterplan, which would have included a drama centre and athletics institute, got built.  What was finished is in two main parts.  The low-rise curve of the Corbusier-meet-carpark Lending library doesn't attract much hatred because it's pretty inoffensive.  The larger structure, that which gets all the attention, is the Reference Library.  It forms an inverted hollow ziggurat, cantilevering out into the sky from improbable stilts at the base.  That mass of floating concrete creates the distinct menace of impending doom. An intimidating architectural game of Chicken.  A Thwomp from Mario about to smash into you from above.  Standing in the centre of the structure, at that time open to the sky, must have felt like being in the eye of a hurricane.

This primal death-from-above fear is perhaps the point of the original design (along with flipping the concept for Lasdun's 1966-7 University of East Anglia accommodation blocks on its head).  The Library was supposed to be impressive, challenging and intriguing.  Of course, it was never intended to look like the nearby Town Hall (please try to remember quite how daft it is that our Georgian and Victorian forebears built things that looked like Greek temples), although perhaps some sensitivity of scale should be acknowledged.  It was a building block for a post-war future, a proud civic monument.

Seeing the building today, it's really really hard to recognise that.  It's clear that the structure has been loathed for some time, and fashion-conscious councils have sought to change or soften or disguise or, oh dear, 'improve' it.  In the same year that Prince Charles described the library as looking 'like a place where books are incinerated, not kept', a tubular steel and glass canopy was jammed between the concrete masses.  Today, punters are lured inside by the charming transfat treats of Greggs and Mcdonald's.

Hanging baskets.  The last-ditch attempt to disguise something hated.

Inside, the space has been roofed in, and a bunch of single-storey retail outlets clutter up the place.  From the library itself, you can look down on the plasterboard ceilings, power cables and other mess on top of these commercial portacabins.  In its current state, it's a horrid experience.  And it's not to be renovated, or restored, or preserved.

Approached from the other side, a late-80s walkway over the ringroad is framed by a pair of unloved PoMo glass boxes (one of which is the Copthorne Hotel, which must be visited if only for the ZOMG mirrored ceiling on the ground floor and Leuven-centred beer selection), grimy red-framed windows like bleary eyes from one too many Steakbakes and Stellas the night before.

One can follow that same walkway over to Centenary Square, where the new C21 library is nearing completion.

Taken from the builders' hoarding, hence the join.

Finished in concrete, this might have looked rather like a Brutalist pile of boxes.  But the architects have sought to hide this hunmdrumdom behind a cladding designed using a Spirograph.  Here's a Youtube CGI flypast of the site and tour of the building with music taken from an early series of Location, Location, Location.

I've nothing in particular against what Charles Jencks would enthusiastically call Radical Postmodernism, although, much like the nearby MAKE-designed Cube, it will date absolutely horribly.

Perhaps it really will make everyone happy.  I can only imagine that future generations of Brummies will be vacuously braying for this to be pulled down because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area and doesn't look like Corinthian temple (or, if tastes have changed that much, because it doesn't look like a Beton Brut megastructure...).

I'll leave you with a rather balanced interview with John Madin, the architect of the Central Library, who passed on in January 2012.  RIP, John.