The Warehouse That Became a Library

Idris Calloway: This is Last Call, and I'm Idris Calloway. A Victorian grain store in a market town was converted into a public library. The engineer on the job said no to the architects twice before they found a scheme that worked. Piotr Nowak is that engineer, and Eleanor Vance, the project architect, has agreed to join him. Piotr, what did you say no to?

Piotr Nowak: Both times, to taking out the first floor. A grain store is built to resist grain pushing outward on the walls, like water in a tank. The floors act as ties. The walls are brick, six hundred millimetres thick at the base, and they lean already, about forty millimetres out of plumb at the eaves. Take the floor out and you remove the thing stopping them leaning further.

Idris Calloway: Eleanor, what were you trying to do?

Eleanor Vance: The library wanted one big reading room, double height, with the light from the top windows falling all the way down. The first scheme took out the floor completely. The second kept the floor but replaced its timber beams with steel and inserted a new ring beam to tie the walls. Piotr said no to that as well.

Piotr Nowak: Because to install the ring beam we would have had to temporarily prop the walls for about four months, from the outside, across the pavement and the market square. The council had said, more than once, that the Saturday market could not move.

Idris Calloway: So what did the third proposal do?

Eleanor Vance: It kept the floor exactly where it was and cut a void through the middle of it, eight metres by five. The reading room is the hole. You stand on the ground floor and look up through the opening to the roof trusses, and the floor that remains around the edges became the gallery for the stacks.

Piotr Nowak: The remaining floor is still a tie, as long as the opening has a steel frame around it that carries the forces round the edge. That frame is the one new structural element in the building, and you can see it painted dark green.

Idris Calloway: Eleanor, was it hard to hear no twice?

Eleanor Vance: The first time I was annoyed. The second time I went to the site with him and he put a laser level on the wall. Forty millimetres is a lot when you see it.

Idris Calloway: Is it a better building because of the refusals?

Eleanor Vance: Yes, and I say so in our talks now. The gallery is everyone's favourite part, and it only exists because we were not allowed what we wanted.

Idris Calloway: Piotr Nowak and Eleanor Vance, thank you. That's Last Call.