Horrors! No doric columns and also 'not, thankfully, some whizzy new "ideas store" '

While tracking down design critics to add to link list (left side) I ran across Jonathan Glancey's

Sense and sensitivity:

"Perhaps I might have liked to have designed a more obviously modern building at one stage, but as we pushed on with the project, I began to see how we might give shape to a building that could be modern without following fashion at the same time as being somehow traditional without being old-fashioned."

And that is just what the new building achieves. It is like a handsome modern barn, neatly crafted from handmade red bricks and roof tiles (from a yard in nearby Romsey), and making robust use of oak joinery. The brickwork of the south front is punctured by huge windows, which bring daylight into the furthest recesses of the essentially open-plan interior. These are fronted by handmade oak sun louvres that look terrific. So does the simple timber bench on the pavement in front of them. Designed as a stopping place for passers-by wanting to soak up some sun, the bench has inevitably found an additional role as a launch-pad for skateboards. It is tough enough to cope.

... Alton Library is not, thankfully, some whizzy new "ideas store": it is, quite simply, a great place to read and write. And it is a model of how to design and craft a functional new building in an old town suspicious of what modernising means: in Alton's case, junk, junk and junk again.

I'd like to see just a bit more of how the sidewalk meets the building but it certainly looks interesting. Am I mistaken that one can simply walk in?

Another point: I would challenge anyone to categorize this library as to "modern" or "traditional." The site plan is definitely "town" and take on no fraudulent "campus" air. Yet it is spare in decoration but with antique shape. So what is it? Modern? Traditional? Obviously it can't be "classical" because it has no coumns. Do you see that such distinction when it deals with style to the exclusion of site plan leads to an empty discussion?

Comments

[Brian Miller]

Quite lovely. Wish my town's new library looked this nice :)

[f.ruiz, architect]

nice enough (particularly in its 'materiality'), but ultimately 'mute' as to its civic purpose and role in the hierarchy of 'town elements'. this is now the 21st.c. , it's interesting to see and hear the arbitrarily belabored and coercive strictures and canons imposed by the 'zeitgeist' of the last century yet being discussed/thought about seriously. one might, at this point, ask, simply: why?