Client: London Borough of Hackney
A four-storey public library and archive built as the developer’s contribution to a new commercial development in Hackney East London as part of a major traffic interchange.
muf worked closely with both client team and drawing on extensive consultation with existing library and archive users and the people to develop both a brief and then a new scheme to stage D that replaced the one developed by Arups. The new scheme specified an exposed structural concrete, natural ventilation adding openable windows and the display and conservation of the demolished local theatre’s salvaged artifacts.
The library is proposed as a unified whole where none the less the archive retains its identity (and meets the requirements of BS 5454) and where a range of very different spaces and uses coexist. At any one time in the new Dalston Library and Hackney Archive there can be the widest range of activities none disturbing the other: a noisy creative workshop in the children’s library, the book club meeting in the cafe, academic research, a family history course, private study, a dash in for a DVD, someone reading a novel in one of the window seats and a public meeting for 50 – all taking place at the same time and all having a presence onto the public realm.
