page_title: Birmingham Central Library
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Birmingham Central Library / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: Birmingham Central Library, Chamberlain Square and the Chamberlain Fountain on 14 August 1983
context_page_description: Birmingham Central Library was the main public library in Birmingham, England, from 1974 until 2013. For a time the largest non-national library in Europe, it closed on 29 June 2013 and was replaced by the Library of Birmingham. The building was demolished in 2016, after 41 years, as part of the redevelopment of Paradise Circus by Argent Group. Designed by architect John Madin in the brutalist style, the library was part of an ambitious development project by Birmingham City Council to create a civic centre on its new Inner Ring Road system; however, for economic reasons significant parts of the master plan were not completed, and quality was reduced on materials as an economic measure. Two previous libraries occupied the adjacent site before Madin's library opened in 1974. The previous library, designed by John Henry Chamberlain, opened in 1883 and featured a tall clerestoried reading room. It was demolished in 1974 after the new library had opened.
  Despite the original vision not being fully implemented, the library gained architectural praise as an icon of British brutalism with its stark use of concrete, bold geometry, inverted ziggurat sculptural form and monumental scale.
context_section_description: The new Central Library opened on 12 January 1974. It was designed by John Madin, a Birmingham-based architect. Its inverted ziggurat form was a powerful example of the Brutalist style. With the Rotunda and the Alpha Tower, it became one of Birmingham's key Modernist buildings.
  Madin designed the Central Library as part of a large civic centre scheme on the newly created Paradise Circus site. Originally planned to be built alongside the library was a School of Music, Drama Centre, Athletic Institute, offices, shops, public house, a car park with 500 spaces and a bus interchange. The collection of civic buildings were all to be connected by high level walkways and the network of galleries which bridge the roads. The School of Music and a public house (The Yardbird) were the only other buildings in the original plans to be built and the high level walkways were never completed.
  The Central Library consisted of two elements: the extrovert lending library and the introvert reference library. The lending library was designed for heavy use and short visits. It formed a wing to the reference library and was of three storeys with a curved façade facing the Town Hall. The reference library was an eight-storey square block designed around an open atrium above a public square that was designed to be entered from four sides. Above the square floated the cantilevered floors of the library in a distinctive inverted ziggurat formation. The designers drew inspiration for the design from Antonio Sant'Elia's drawings of Casa a gradinata, and Marcel Breuer's 1928 scheme for a hospital at Elberfeld, Indiana; while another source of inspiration was Leslie Martin's Bodleian Law Library in Oxford. It has also been suggested that they were influenced by the similar design for Boston City Hall, but a member of Madin's design team said they had only seen this design after the library was complete.
  The central atrium was completely glazed behind deep concrete balconies; this arrangement was to make it conducive to study. Although there was good natural light, the design was an early recognition of solar gain and the damage it can cause to books. The large windows of the reference library face inwards to reduce traffic noise from the Inner Ring road. On the outside the windows were high level narrow strips with black anodised window frames. The space below the central atrium of the library was designed to define a civic square with gardens, pools, waterfalls and fountains, and potentially to form an open-air exhibition space. Six pools were to be placed in and around this square. Madin also designed the semi-circular amphitheatre around the Chamberlain Memorial in Chamberlain Square to frame the entrance to the library and the new civic square.
  The structure was supported on a square set of twelve reinforced concrete columns, built over the Inner Ring road and the uncompleted bus interchange. The bus bays imposed a 36 ft pier spacing on the main block, and led to the standardization of a 1 ft 6in module for the design. Concrete was strongly expressed within the building, the external finishes to structural elements being unclad reinforced concrete. The walls were ribbed, and the locally graded round aggregate was exposed by abrasive blasting. The floors were made of precast concrete coffered units over which a reinforced concrete floor was cast. For the cladding Madin offered the council a choice of Portland Stone or Travertine Marble to align with the adjacent civic buildings. A third, cheaper option was pre-cast concrete with Hoptonwood limestone and Derbyshire spar aggregate with white cement: this was offered by Alan Maudsley, the City Architect, and accepted by the council as an economy measure.
  The entrance hall, which was double height between the lending and reference libraries, was entirely glazed on the side facing the atrium – an early example of a freestanding wall made of toughened glass. Before later developments the wall allowed the entrance to be flooded with light and provided views of the Town Hall from the escalators.
  The library
caption: The library from Chamberlain Square in 1983
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