HOK has unveiled its plans to help the British Library store the vast majority of its huge collection on a single site in West Yorkshire.
The 90-year masterplan, for the British Library’s Boston Spa base, will enable the institution to store 80% of its 150 million items on the site, including its entire newspaper collection.
HOK’s design features a series of orthogonal buildings on either side of a central spine. These will boast green roofs and cladding featuring the letters of the alphabet.
HOK director Andrew Barraclough said: “We’ve taken inspiration from a number of similar projects around the world including the US national archives, the national archives in Paris and the archives at the University of California.
“Our goal was to create a site for the British Library that will provide a plan for future flexibility within a framework where future buildings of differing sizes and floorplates can be added without compromise to the integrity of our vision.
“The first phase of implementation will be the construction of the newspaper storage building to allow the transfer of the collection from Colindale [London] in 2012.”
The Boston Spa site was previously a Ministry of Defence ordnance factory, and many of the buildings there date from the second world war.
HOK’s replacements for these allow for the expansion of the collection, which grows at a rate of 12km of shelving space a year.
The practice anticipates that over the next 75 years, 16ha of low-oxygen, automated library storage will be created on the site, along with 3ha of conventional storage and new office facilities.
Source : www.bdonline.com
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