The British Library holds one of the world's greatest collections, yet the work of maintaining it such as conservation, repair, digitisation happens invisibly, and the atrium that connects everything offers almost nowhere to stop, study, or encounter the collection directly.…
The British Library holds one of the world’s greatest collections, yet the work of maintaining it such as conservation, repair, digitisation happens invisibly, and the atrium that connects everything offers almost nowhere to stop, study, or encounter the collection directly. This project proposes a laminated timber intervention in the atrium, attached to the existing concrete frame, that makes these hidden processes visible and creates new spaces for working, reading, and collective study. The intervention is organised around a gradient of enclosed conservation spaces near the King’s Tower to open study areas that break through the existing roof where the curvature of the timber system itself generates the furniture, surfaces, and spatial conditions of each zone. The question of knowledge in this era will be accessed but also witnessed, encountered, and experienced in the new British Library.
