Wright & Wright deftly remodels the historic New Library at Magdalen College, Oxford

Words
Chris Foges
Photos
Dennis Gilbert

The familiar image of St Jerome in his study, as depicted by many Renaissance painters, has the biblical scholar sitting on or in an oversized piece of wooden furniture – a hybrid of desk and bookshelves – that defines his workplace within a larger space. It’s an appealing scene: he sits with all of his books and papers near at hand, cocooned by warm timber, but from his elevated position has a view out from this modest cell into an airy, elegant room.

Something similar can now be enjoyed by students at Magdalen College, Oxford, whose new library by Wright & Wright Architects comprises a freestanding three-storey timber structure inserted within a church-like building by JC Buckler (1851), as well as a single-storey Clipsham stone-clad extension that makes a new edge to Longwall Quad.

The Buckler building was originally a lofty one-room school with tall windows. It was converted into the college library in 1930 by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the buildings on two sides of the quad. With just 48 reading spaces, the library was too small for today’s college population of 660, and suffered from poor facilities, fluctuating temperatures and bug infestations.

Wright & Wright’s £10m project provides 120 reading spaces, arranged in a variety of settings to suit individual preferences. An upper floor inserted by Gilbert Scott was stripped out to restore the full height of the former school hall above ground (book stores are at lower-ground level), and a stair was ingeniously worked into the full-height former entrance lobby, giving access to two reading rooms on the upper floors of the new oak insertion.

Students now enter the library though the ‘L’-shaped single-storey extension, which is sunk a little below grade in Longwall Quad so that it reads as a podium for the stand-alone Buckler building, and marries up with its lower-ground floor. The entrance is set at the point where the two wings of the new building meet, encouraging students to approach diagonally across the quad – a rare occurrence in Oxford, where ‘keep off the grass’ signs abound. Inside, the foyer and casual seating areas are lined by stone and rough-rendered walls that blend subtly with the exposed foundations of the nineteenth-century building.

To the right, in the wing that aligns the wall separating the quad from Longwall Street, is a reading room with bookshelves in the centre and study areas along both edges. This ‘zoning’ minimises disturbance to readers by those browsing the stacks. On one side, desks are set in front of windows looking onto the quad at lawn height; in a Soane-inspired detail, operable windows slide open across an adjacent mirrored panel. The reading area on the other side of the room is more private and enclosed, with roof windows suppling the only daylight.

Furniture, like the shelving and internal doors, is all in American white oak. Tables are fitted with chunky brushed aluminium desk lamps designed by the architects, and inlaid with blue linoleum. The chairs – originally designed by Barber & Osgerby for Oxford’s Bodleian Library – are also upholstered with blue fabric.

In the Buckler building, reading rooms are also arranged to suit diverse preferences. “Some students might want to be sociable, and others might want to tuck themselves away and be quiet”, says architect Clare Wright. “Some like light spaces, others prefer dark.” A short glazed bridge links the stair to the central bay on each floor; the plan is arranged symmetrically on either side, with reading bays aligned with the centre of existing windows. Students working on the first-floor are cosily enveloped by wood walls and low ceilings, but from their eyries have views down to the floor of the room below, and outside to the quad or the city. As with St Jerome’s study, one feels that the confined workspaces should be conducive to concentration, while the long vistas allow for periodic relaxation.

The top deck is edged with 1200mm-high bookshelves, giving a reassuring sense of solidity and enclosure, but is open to the original dark-stained pine roof above, giving a close-up view of its weighty trusses. Also in readers’ eyeline are the building’s old oak entrance door and an ancient nail-studded gate from the quad, now mounted high on the wall like shields. This inventive redeployment is indicative of the sensitivity with which Wright & Wright Architects has approached the brief, and the building. In the careful stripping back of the original structure to reveal its richness and scale, and addition of the new to create comfortable, considered places within all that space, the two parts have been handled in delicate balance so that each brings out the quality of the other.

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