University of Roehampton Library

The new library at the University of Roehampton is the centrepiece of an ambitious campus masterplan and characterised by a generous park and garden landscape that makes it unique among London’s universities. The library creates a new identity for the University, addressing the entrance to the campus as well as connecting the Digby Stuart and Southlands Colleges, and facing a new landscape and existing ornamental lake. The University’s brief was to provide a library building with gravitas and longevity; a building of books and study and whose design reflects this interest in the serious investigation of learning. The aspiration was for an enduring architecture, and this is achieved through a clear architectural language; the colonnade activating the landscape and lake, the piano nobile floors and deeply recessed upper storey. This is continued with a simple palette of high quality materials; externally focussed around masonry and reveal, internally a weaving of expressed pre-cast concrete structure and oak linings. The four Colleges of the University have a distinguished history, particularly in the field of childhood studies, theology and education, and the library houses their collection of over 300,000 volumes. The new library delivers over 1,000 study spaces, staff support and work areas, specialist digitisation and collection management over five floors and 7,840sqm. It delivers a number of specialist functions focussed around the University’s education and teaching, and celebrates the rich history of the four Colleges that form the University through fixed exhibition spaces. Study spaces within the library are intended to support a variety of group sizes and work intensities, from individual silent study to medium sized group collaboration, while making use of visual connections to the garden landscape. Internally the building is arranged around large and small atrium spaces that allow the spaces to interconnect in a clear, intuitive way. The building also has a ground floor café that allows for more relaxed breakout study environment that faces onto the landscape and lake. This is a building that celebrates the process of finding and taking the book to the study space and to the light. With the books occupying the core of the main library volume the study spaces are arranged to take in the light and view, and in particular they wrap around the various atria that weave through the building. These study desks have proven to be very popular and demonstrate the relevance of high quality spaces to this library environment. Sustainability University of Roehampton library is designed to be a passive building in energy and comfort terms, with highly insulated facades, high levels of airtightness and roofs supported by a thermally activated building slab (TABS) system installed into the concrete soffits. The building also has a roof-mounted 3.5kW photovoltaic array and connection to a combined heat and power unit that also supplies the neighbouring Elm Grove residential and conference centre. Coupled with envelope performance that exceeded 2013 building regulations by over 25%, the building achieved an airtightness of 1.3mm3/m2@50PA. The TABS system utilises embedded cooling pipes into the precast concrete soffits to improve the thermal mass cooling capability, and further extend the cooling season. This is particularly relevant as summer temperatures are expected to increase both in peaks and longevity over the next 30-50 years. The precast concrete soffits are a major architectural element of the building, and it was important to imbue them with a role that underpinned the passive environmental design. The building also engages passive measures of orientation, with increased areas of glazing to the East and reduced areas to the West. The service areas of the building are located on the West façade, further reducing the potential for overheating. Study, seminar and work spaces along the West elevation also include user-controllable opening vents to address issues of comfort. Future flexibility The aspiration of the University of Roehampton from the outset was for a library that would be the core of their campus for 100+ years, and as a result the design team explored with them the possibilities of future library use. One key model that was considered was that of a future library with fewer books, and the possibilities in a building that could respond to more users accessing content without physical copies. In practical terms this means more study and reference spaces and a greater density of occupants, so the building was sized in key areas, such as stair core widths, so that occupancies to each floor could be increased as the numbers of books reduced. Allowances have been made for further mobile bookstacks, which can increase the density of books stored in a space compared with traditional racking. The intention is that the library is able to grow and change with developments in how libraries are seen and accessed by both staff and students, and genuinely be a building with longevity and flexibility. Prefabrication on an active campus A key part of the project was the extensive use of prefabricated elements, which was particularly relevant and successful given the library’s location at the centre of an active campus. Use of prefabrication at the library enabled a shortened site construction period, reduced disruption to the surrounding University and improvements in finish quality. The project utilised pre-cast concrete for both the primary structural frame and external cladding, and large parts of the internal timber linings. The continuous pre-cast structural frame define the internal character of the new library, the soffit is intentionally left clear to allow the thermally active slab to absorb excess heat from the space. The soffit panels were to a bespoke design that allowed a close integration of services, including the TABS cooling pipework and a highly flexible routing for lighting and other soffit-mounted services. The design took these services elements made them a vital part of the expression of the soffit, and benefitted strongly from the precision and quality control from off-site manufacture.