CENTRAL LIBRARY: DEMOLISHING THE ARGUMENTS FOR 'FITTING IN'

03-12-2008

While the Culture Department dithers on its decision on whether or not to list Birmingham Central Library, campaigner Alan Clawley is cheekily pursuing all the correspondence between the local authority and the Minister in the last year. Good for him. In the meantime, he re-assesses the arguments for demolition.

Some critics of the architecture of the Central Library argue that it doesn’t “fit in” with the buildings that surround it, meaning of course, the old ones, the neo-classical Town Hall, Council House, Hall of Memory and Baskerville House and the neo-gothic Chamberlain Memorial, rather than the modern hotel, office blocks and music school buildings that also nestle round it.

Freddie Gick [Birmingham Civic Society] speaking on the BBC’s One Show stood outside the Library and proclaimed, “This architecture had its place perhaps in post-revolutionary Russia. It doesn’t have a place in a Victorian Square in Birmingham. Just look at it! It doesn’t look right does it?”

A few days later the Council’s chief librarian, Brian Gambles pointed out during an interview on Radio Four “The incongruity of the way that the Brutalist structure of the present Central Library sits with the Victorian and post-Victorian structures around us [Lucinda Lambton and he]. He went on, “I think it sits very oddly with those”.

So what kind of building do these critics of modern architecture imagine will “fit in” with the Library’s more venerable neighbours?

Will it look unashamedly modern like its predecessor or will it copy the style of one or more bygone eras? Will it match the style of the Chamberlain Memorial or blend with the Town Hall and the Council House? Perhaps it will try to please everyone with a clever post-modernist mixture of many styles and no style at all as long as it isn’t concrete.

And where will they find a reputable modern architect to design it for them? Perhaps they are so confident of their own taste that they can dispense with the services of an architect altogether and design it themselves as indeed they may have to.

Perhaps Prince Charles will be persuaded to offer his own architect to reproduce the folksy cosiness of Poundbury village. The famous Clough Williams Ellis, collector of old buildings and designer of the fantastic holiday village of Portmeirion is no longer alive to offer his unique town–planning skills.

People who don’t “fit in” are often categorised as awkward, lacking in social skills, eccentric or too assertive for their own good. They may be called “poor team players”, social deviants or non-conformists. They could even be whistleblowers, prophets, or thinkers. Sometimes they are said to stand in the way of progress. But though such people make life uncomfortable our lives would be impoverished without them.

Could this psychology be applied to the Library? A building that “fits in” will have characteristics opposite to those shown by one that doesn’t fit in. It will be conformist, backward-looking and visually comfortable, unassertive to the point of being invisible.

I prefer Lucinda Lambton’s sharp repost to Brian Gambles. She said, “I think it’s real rubbish saying that it [the Library] sits awkwardly, because all great buildings … I mean look at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example, that doesn’t sit well with any of its neighbours. If it’s a really good building and of its age, with a huge integrity of its age, then that’s terrific, it doesn’t matter; it shouldn’t fit with its neighbours.”