Níall McLaughlin Architects / The New Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge University
Magdalene College’s New Library shows how architects can engage in thoughtful design intended to last centuries
Words By Emily Martin
Images By Nick Kane
Project Info
Architect Níall McLaughlin Architects
Client Magdalene College
Completion January 2021
NÍALL MCLAUGHLIN ARCHITECTS was appointed to design Magdalene College’s New College Library in Cambridge through a competition held in 2014. The new building replaces cramped and poorly equipped facilities in the adjacent Grade 1 Listed Pepys Building with a larger library, incorporating an archive facility and a picture gallery. The new building, which is sited in a highly sensitive historic setting, has been hailed a huge success with a string of accolades, including the prestigious Stirling Prize Winner 2022, alongside others including RIBA National Award 2022, RIBA Regional Award 2022, Civic Trust Award Winner 2022, Wood Award in Education Category and Gold Award 2021 among others.
The gabled pitched roof structure, seen from below and demonstrating diffusion of light
The building is approached through a little doorway and out under an old yew tree. From this shady corner you sense the presence of the river opening out at the edge of the lawn.
An exterior view of The New Library, including the distinctive chimneys
‘We wanted to make the building a journey that gradually rose up towards the light,’ explains Níall McLaughlin Architects. ‘On the way up there would be rooms, galleries and places to perch with a book. At the top, there would be views out over the lawn towards the water. We wanted to create a variety of ways for someone to situate themselves depending on inclination. You might sit in a grand hall, a small room, or tuck yourself into a tiny private niche.’
Although technically a new building, The New Library still draws on the site’s history, including through its use of pitched gabled roofing.
The materiality and form of the new library are derived both from its context and from the college’s brief to make a highly durable and sustainable building. The older college buildings are of load bearing brick, with timber floors and gabled pitched roofs structures. Brick chimneys animate the skyline and stone tracery picks out the windows. The practice wanted the new library building to follow these architectural elements. It says:
The New Library is complemented by natural tones afforded by utilising wood and large apertures for natural lighting
‘We used timber instead of stone for our window tracery, which will weather over time to become a silvery grey like the stone. We worked carefully with our builders to find a variety of bricks that would match the tapestrylike quality of the older college buildings.
At the same time, this is a modern building that employs innovative passive ventilation strategies to minimise energy in use and engineered timber structure to reduce carbon embodied in its construction.’
The New Library is complemented by natural tones afforded by utilising wood and large apertures for natural lighting
The New Library contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery and appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled forms of the existing college. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Conceived as a journey towards the light, three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The Henry Pang Room, with a large window allowing natural light to flood in
The New Library uses interrelated elements as a crucial part of the design makeup. A regular grid of brick chimneys supports the floors and bookstacks and carries warm air up to ventilate the building. Between each set of four chimneys there is a roof lantern bringing light down into the spaces below: air rising and light falling. The library is complex and thoughtful in the way that the space is divided and not a library seen anywhere else before. Think more along the lines of a well-considered open plan office, which was very interesting to walk through.
Scooping the 26th RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture, last autumn for The New Library is testament to the attention to detail and depth of though that has gone into its design by Níall McLaughlin Architects. Speaking on behalf of the 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize jury, RIBA President Simon Allford commented: ‘A unique setting with a clear purpose – The New Library at Magdalene College is sophisticated, generous architecture that has been built to last. Creating a new building that will last at least 400 years is a significant challenge, but one that Niall McLaughlin Architects has risen to with the utmost skill, care and responsibility.’
