The Hugh Owen Building

The Hugh Owen Building

This modernist university library and teaching complex dates from the mid-20th century and is constructed in reinforced concrete with gravel aggregate panels, brick, and steel-framed ribbon windows. The building is organised as three very wide flat-roofed rectangular blocks, each three or four storeys high, that step down the hillside progressively from the highest library block at the south end to the lowest range to the north. A short projecting east wing sits between the middle and lower ranges. The entire structure is raised above the road level into the campus by landscaping that runs parallel to the building. The ribbon windows are designed to flow continuously from one block to the next, with mid-level windows continuing as the upper storey windows of the adjacent block downhill. Overhangs and underpasses supported on pilotis at the joints between blocks create a sheltered pedestrian walkway that winds around and under the building, allowing students to navigate the campus in bad weather.

The massive southern library block faces onto the wide central piazza and was designed to relate to the Great Hall in height, shape, and materials whilst also managing sunlight within the library. The ground floor is deeply recessed under the first floor, which is held up on pilotis, providing both shade and a covered pedestrian walkway. The first floor features a continuous ribbon window and is sheltered by the cantilevered bulk of the second floor above, which is clad in aggregate panels punctuated by vertical slit windows with deep square cavities in the overhanging underside. Set back from the outer edge of the upper volume is a raised brick cuboid fitted with clerestory windows to allow light into the centre of the library's top storey. An exterior brick balcony on the north side of this block connects a footpath to an entrance into the library's middle floor.

The teaching blocks are successively lower and much narrower from front to back. The middle block is three storeys, set forwards of the library block, with a projecting overhang sheltering much of the upper ribbon window. The ground floor is blind across its southernmost half before another ribbon window begins. At the southwest corner, the ground floor features a cut-away with a chamfered corner to provide pedestrian access and an entrance into the lower lecture theatre, with the floors above supported on pilotis. To the rear, the entire ground floor is recessed behind pilotis, forming a sheltered colonnade that descends via exterior steps and passes under the projecting east wing. This east wing has three storeys, partly raised on pilotis, with ribbon windows facing north and south and a blind square east face. The lowest-lying north block is set forwards towards the road and begins as three storeys at its joint with the other blocks, gaining an additional floor as it proceeds north and downhill. The lower two storeys are slightly recessed on the west side and more deeply recessed to the east, continuing the sheltered walkway. To the front south, the lower floor is recessed with a sheltered passage passing through to the other side of the building and to a recently added exterior lift attached to the middle range. At the far north end, the lower two storeys are deeply recessed under tall pilotis with a square concrete grid overhead. A fully glazed ground floor foyer with chamfered corners sits at this end, with brick and a ribbon window serving the floor above.

The lower blocks are divided by axial north-south corridors, generally with seminar rooms on the east and academic offices on the west overlooking the town and sea, whilst lecture halls occupy the east wing projection and the middle range ground floor. An open-plan reading room occupying most of the upper floor of the middle range was renamed the Iris De Freitas Room in 2016 in honour of the Aberystwyth alumnus who arrived in 1919 and later became the first woman lawyer in the Caribbean. This room has been recently refurbished with some of the corrugated concrete roof structure left exposed. The north entry into the mid-level of the library block leads to a wide foyer with a staircase descending to the ground floor with an internal window above, and entry into the first floor reading room, both finished in brick with chamfered corners. The third floor library reading room is an open-plan space with inserted silent study rooms positioned off-centre to the south, constructed as brick rectangles with chamfered corners and interior glazing.

A pitched roof block was added to the northeast in 1993, linked to the lower range of the Hugh Owen Building by an overhead enclosed walkway, but is of no architectural interest.