CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH - WHY DO WE NEED LIBRARIES?
SEPTEMBER 2024
Associate Tim Allen-Booth gave a talk on the New College Library at Magdalene College Cambridge as part of an event on the future of libraries organised by Cambridge Architectural Research as part of their Showroom series. CAR helped Magdalene to write the brief for the new library and it was fascinating to hear the story of its development. An enjoyable evening of discussion concluded with a dusk tour of the library kindly facilitated by the College.
RIBA EAST AWARD WINNER
MAY 2022
Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."