(Copyright Hugh Pearman/The Sunday Times: the unedited version of the article published in The Sunday Times, Ocober 10, 1999 as "Peckham Wry")
Looked at sideways, this building is an inverted L. Far from usual, let's say. Its copper-clad cross-stroke appears to hang in the air - closer inspection reveals it is supported by spidery columns leaning at odd angles. Its underbelly is hung with skeins of stainless steel mesh. From the back - or is it the front? - it is completely different, a sheer Mondrianesque composition of panels of different-coloured glass. Its roof sports what looks like a giant protruding orange tongue. Also a pair of large illuminated signs, front and rear. They spell out the word LIBRARY. Fair enough: it helps to be told.
It seems that architect Will Alsop has been having fun again, in the rather unexpected setting of Peckham in South London. Unexpected because, things being the way they are in conservative Britain, Alsop tends to build his more extreme designs elsewhere in Europe. In France his Grand Bleu
regional parliament building in Marseilles , an exuberant loose assemblage of disparate parts, is celebrated. The £4.5m Peckham library, while being much simpler, smaller and cheaper than its big French cousin, nonetheless manages to pack even more punch per square foot. Its size may be small but its scale is immense.
Public libraries used to have a mission. They used to be grand, clearly important civic buildings. Then they became rather mean things, underfunded, under threat. In an on-line age, people began to question the need for them. Cash-strapped councils looking to balance the books always eye up libraries for closure first. But Peckham represents a outright reversal of this trend. It takes the idea of a library by the scruff of its neck and holds it - quite literally - up in the air for us all to see. This library is not going to go quietly. On the contrary, it is going to arrive very noisily.
These are still early days. The builders are finishing the place off. Outside, the new landscaped plaza beneath the overhang of the upturned L is still being laid. Inside, the shelves are not yet arranged, let alone taking books. But now that it is complete on the outside, it is already working hard as a new London landmark. From the upper floors you get one of the best views of central London anywhere. Its field of vision stretches from Westminster to Greenwich, from the cranes of the impending 'London Eye' Millennium Wheel to the yellow masts of the Millennium Dome. Which means that, when you are riding your glassy gondola on the Wheel next year, you will be able to look south and see the parti-coloured Peckham Library, shining at you like a beacon.
