Peckham Library is a library

Library

In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

 and community building situated in Peckham

Peckham

Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

 in south-east London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. It was designed by Alsop and Störmer

Will Alsop

Will Allen Alsop, OBE RA is a British architect based in London. He is responsible for several distinctive and controversial modernist buildings, most in the United Kingdom. Alsop's buildings are usually distinguished by their use of bright colour and unusual forms...

 and won the Stirling Prize

Stirling Prize

The Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize is a British prize for excellence in architecture. It is named after the architect James Stirling, organised and awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects...

for Architecture in 2000.

It is a striking building best imagined as an inverted capital letter 'L', with the upper part supported by thin steel pillars set at apparently random angles. Various 'pods' house meeting rooms, children's areas and the library's Afro-Caribbean section.

The exterior is clad with pre-patinated copper.

The Stirling prize judges were impressed with the building's approach. Alsop has taken the plan footprint of a conventional library and elevated it to create a public space beneath the building and to remove the quiet reading space from street level noise. The remaining, supporting buildings on the ground and 1st floors house the information and media centre.

The Library opened to the public on March 8, 2000, with an official opening by the Rt Hon Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport on May 15, 2000.

The building attracted 500,000 visitors in its first year of opening in the wake of its receipt of the prize. This has dropped to approximately 420,000 for 2006.

External links

• Peckham Library on Southwark Council site
• Peckham Library & Media Centre architecture page on Open University site
• Peckham Library, London, UK guide on BBC h2g2 site