Arts and Social Sciences Library, Cardiff University

Cadw's description

Location

Set back behind trees on the north side of Corbett Road, the building is bound to the west by a Victorian terrace on Colum Road and on the east by the Cathays to Llandaff trainline. Raised embankment to south and west with main entrance reached by concrete bridge to first floor on south side.

History

University library built from 1973 and opened August 1975 at a cost of £1.1 million. Designed by Faulkner-Brown Hendy Watkinson Stonor with engineering by Ove Arup & Partners and built by Sir Robert McAlpine &Sons (South Wales) Limited and Costain Concrete Ltd.

The nucleus of Cardiff University’s library was the roughly 50,000 books collected by Enoch Salisbury (1819-1890) and sold to the nascent University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1886. This collection travelled from North to South Wales on a specially commissioned train and came to be housed in the Draper’s Library at the College’s main building. By the end of the 1960s the collection was growing to unmanageable size. A new library building dedicated to Arts and Social Sciences subjects was planned and a large locomotive shed demolished at what was Cathays locomotive depot, close to other University buildings at the northeast corner of Cathays Park.

Harry Faulkner-Brown (1920-2008), was an influential architect of post-war libraries in the UK and internationally. A native of Newcastle he studied architecture at King’s College (now Newcastle University) and served in the Royal Engineers during WW2, winning a Military Cross for his role in the battle of Arnhem in September 1944. After demobilisation Faulkner-Brown practiced architecture in Canada until 1962 before returning to the UK to form Williamson, Faulkner-Brown & Partners (later known as Faulkner-Brown Hendy Watkinson Stonor). He designed Jesmond Branch Library completed 1963, Wallsend Public Library built 1965-66 and the Hallward Library for Nottingham University completed in 1973 just as work was beginning in Cardiff. The 1970s also saw Faulkner-Brown lecturing widely and publishing articles on the principles of good library design, which he summarised as his ‘ten commandments’, that a library should be:

1. Flexible. 2. Compact. 3. Accessible. 4.Extendible. 5. Varied. 6. Organised. 7. Comfortable. 8. Constant in environment. 9. Secure. 10. Economic.

Faulkner-Brown’s Cardiff library was intended to be only the first phase of a library that would have been almost double the size if it had been completed. The entrance into the left-most of the four bays in the front facing Corbett Road was to have been centrally placed in a square plan building of seven bays. This would have brought the building out to the east side of Colum Road and required the purchase and demolition of the southern third of the late Victorian terrace of houses. The resulting building would have been a square in plan facing the Cathays Park government offices (CP2), then under construction in a comparable aesthetic. At the time the Centreplan 70 proposals for redevelopment of Cardiff city centre envisaged the demolition of hundreds of Victorian buildings to make way for half a dozen tower blocks on the scale of Pearl Assurance House on Greyfriars road. Construction of Phase 1 of the Arts and Social Sciences Library was ongoing in 1973 when the global oil crisis and UK stock market crash forced a change of plans, both in the University and in Cardiff at large. The resulting building is more asymmetrical in its planning than some of Faulkner-Brown’s other libraries.

In 1976 the building won Commendations from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Concrete Society.

Exterior

Brutalist library based on an infinitely repeatable system of in-situ reinforced concrete posts and spine beam lintels. These exposed lintels project beyond the building envelope and support overhangs shading the steel framed ribbon glazing to the bays between columns. Flat roofed. Rectangular in plan about 60 by 35 metres with four stories and four bays to each elevation, with bays much wider on the longer north-south axis.

Structural members are grit blasted. Columns have a smooth inner vertical recess facing north and south. Lintels running east to west have chamfered undersides and trapezoidal ends. Canopy overhangs are smooth on top with vertically grooved fascia panels and coffered soffits. Full glazing grid of alternating wider and narrow vertical frames, with 8 wider panels to each bay on long sides and 5 on shorter sides. On the long sides glazed cut offs meet the chamfered beams, with a horizontal bar running between these.

Main entrance on the first floor reached by a gently ramped concrete bridge on the short south side as broad as the westernmost bay it connects to. Bridge was originally cobbled but has been resurfaced. Slightly inward curved battered brick plinth to lower ground floor.

Interior

The interior is largely open plan between the columnated grid, with the massive horizontal beams and columns expressed internally, internal partition walls are concentrated at the corners.

A central half turn staircase with semicircle landings between floors is aligned with the main entrance on the west side, floating on the first floor and within a curved brick envelope to the other levels. The elevator is also on this line at the rear northwest corner. Two other half turn staircases in curved brick envelopes at the northeast and southeast corners, adjacent to toilets.

Soundproof panels set on the wider spaces in the glazing grid so that the interior environment has narrow vertical windows allowing even natural light reaching deep into the plan over the course of the day while the sound of the city is muted. U-shaped ceiling panel grid is intended to dampen internal sound and shade the strip lighting running through it. Clear height from floor to the low end of these panels is reportedly 3.1 metres and the light fittings are in the inner recess half a metre deep.

Reason for designation

The Arts and Social Sciences Library is of special interest and Listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons -

Architectural Interest: A key example of a twentieth century university library in Wales, designed by Harry Faulkner-Brown an influential figure in library design and demonstrating his ‘ten commandments’ with clarity and finesse in its Brutalist design.

Historic Interest: Illustrates an important aspect of Wales’ cultural history as an important university library and the last major building of the postwar expansion in tertiary education in Cardiff commenced before the economic shocks of the 1970s.

Group Value with other listed university buildings in Cardiff.