Chandler's Ford Library

Chandler's Ford Library

Public library designed 1981–2 by County Architect Colin Stansfield Smith, with Barry Bryant as project architect, Anthony Hunt and Associates as engineers, and Terry Riggs responsible for interiors. A mural was created by Graham Crowley. The building opened in May 1983.

The structure is supported on load-bearing brick diaphragm walls and internal splayed timber columns, beneath steeply-pitched plain tile roofs in facetted sections. The side and rear walls are clad in warm red facing brick, while the front elevation is fully glazed. External fixtures, trims and finishes, including rainwater goods, are painted red.

The building is semicircular in plan, facing a small open public space at the end of the shopping precinct. The front is concave, comprising a fully glazed screen wall above a narrow red cill band with central entrance doors. To the left, the convex brick form of the staff stair is set back beneath the deep canopy created by the roof. The rear takes the form of a brick drum punctuated with occasional door and window openings beneath deep oversailing eaves. Window openings are deep-set with raking brick cills and flat arches with red painted soffits. Windows are timber pivot or top-hung casements, painted red. Clerestory glazing is set into the rear sections of the roof. An external steel staircase leads from the western end of the mezzanine.

The ground floor is a single open space, with a small defined children's area and behind it a staff workroom and services. The open space is divided at the front by tree-like splayed timber columns rising to the roof and at the rear by square-section piers supporting the mezzanine. Glazed walls have internal fins that create bay divisions. The front wall is lined with a continuous bench set forward from the structural frame, now coloured blue (originally red), which when installed disguised convection heaters. The ground floor staff workroom retains original timber desks with red laminate worktops.

Above is a shallower mezzanine, also on the curve, reached by centrally-placed stairs and a lift. The mezzanine stands forward from the rear wall, making space for a mural by Graham Crowley in coloured plastic cut-outs depicting the Four Seasons, mounted on the rear wall and top-lit by clerestory windows. The stairs rise opposite the entrance; the original curved stair well has been replaced with an open well stair wrapping around the lift, though the solid masonry walls are still painted red and the stairs remain set forward from the rear wall and mural. The mezzanine has a tubular steel frame and glass balustrade painted blue, the original colour scheme.

The librarian's office, a glass-fronted box top-lit from above, projects over the ground floor. Leading off the mezzanine are a staff room and stock room. Staff stairs to the upper floor have a curved profile expressing their external form. A separate room enclosed in glass screen walls was created during recent refurbishment. Separate stairs within the staff area also give access to the upper level.

The shelving and issue desks were refurbished in 2012–13 and are mostly free-standing.