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.

Set in its own plaza, the Peckham Library is essentially a giant inverted “L”, which Will Alsop himself describes it as a giant rectangle with a bit cut out. This L-shaped design has the effect of creating a natural, sheltered meeting area in front of the library, which, combined with the generous plaza surrounding it, means that the library becomes the center of a busy urban, rather than just another building on a street. The first three floors in the long arm of the L comprise the media center and information. The short arm of the L at the fourth floor contains the library.

The whole building has an amazing gravity-defying quality. With greenish-blue hue surface that derived from copper clad, there is columns set at irregular angles which hold up the top two floors look as if they should snap, causing the whole thing to topple over and create an unnerving arcade. A giant orange tongue-shaped attachment flops out of the roof, acts as a shade for the ventilation shafts. The north-facing side is covered with multi-colored glass panels. This design benefits the reading hall for excellent daylight penetration and spectacular views across London, and is a popular destination for the wider community.

Inside the library space there is three elevated-on-columns, sound-insulated, timber-framed pods. Those pods are housing meeting rooms, a children’s playroom and an African-Carribean study library. The pods leave usable, accessible space below them while providing private areas for quiet study above the main library floor. Peckham Library was opened for public on March 8, 2000. The awards received by the Peckham Library are: 2000 Stirling Award for architectural innovation, the Civic Trust Award in April 2002 for excellence in public architecture along with the London Eye and Tate Modern, and 2001 Copper Cladding Award.

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