Alsop’s Colorium forms one element of a larger ongoing program for the regeneration of Dusseldorf’s waterfront. The completed ‘Media Harbor’ project will include works by Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, David Chipperfield and Fumihiko Maki. The building was designed as an office block, with its special shape as a process of aesthetic, economic and social rebirth. The area in which it has been built is the old river port of Dusseldorf, which has several examples of industrial archaeology, with brick buildings and anonymous steel facades.

Designed for a private client, the Colorium occupies a long, narrow peninsula site whose thin side faces on to the water. Alsop’s original scheme for this challenging footprint was for a taller structure which mixed conventional office space with live/work lofts, a penthouse and restaurant. Planning restrictions, however, reduced the height of building to 62 m which the final design divides into 17 floors of office space. In place of the radical forms for which he is known, Alsop has elected to radicalize the skin of his design, with sensuous facade treatment transforming the tower’s standard orthogonal structure.

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Peckham Library is a library and community building located in Peckham in south-east London. As a part of the London Borough of Southwark’s commitment to architecture and urban regeneration, Alsop Architects’ Peckham Library is a controversial and iconic building, which has featured significantly in debates about how architecture can best serve the poorest inner-city communities. Peckham Library is a bold, imaginative, highly successful building. It is combining strong form, vivid color and a sense of wit within a design that meets the serious purpose of providing a building that really enriches local community life.

The construction cost of the Peckham Library was £5 million, including £1.25 million from the Single Regeneration Budget programme. The library was designed to be striking, to make people curious about what lies inside, and to challenge the traditional view of libraries as staid and serious environments. Visitors would be hard pushed to work out that it is actually a library. The sign LIBRARY in large bold letters on the roof signals the function of this building but it is much more than a conventional library.

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