TCD library extension to create space `full of light and silence'

A space "full of light and silence to read, browse and think in" which could be one of Dublin's most significant millennium projects. That's how its architects describe the proposed £12 million extension to the library in Trinity College, Dublin.

Designed by McCullough Mulvin and Keane Murphy Duff, two Dublin-based architectural practices, the new building is to be erected between the existing Berkeley Library, opened in 1967, and Trinity's high-railed Nassau Street frontage.

The scheme results from an architectural competition which attracted interest from such big names as Sir Norman Foster and Sir Richard Rogers as well as Ahrends Burton and Koralek, the London architects who designed the Berkeley Library. The new building will provide 9,000 sq metres of space on up to eight levels - including basements - to cater for 750 readers and store 360,000 books. It will also incorporate the latest in information technology.

Trinity said this major addition to its facilities was required to meet the requirements of its increasing student population as well as the many external readers who use its facilities, which include access to all books published in Britain and Ireland.

At present, library services are split between the Berkeley Library and the Lecky Library in the Arts Building. The extension will integrate services in all three buildings and facilitate the use of their collections by students and the wider academic community.

The college's brief for the competition allowed entrants to consider whether to design a new building linked to the Berkeley Library or the possibility of providing the additional space underneath Fellows Square, in what would amount to a "non-building".

Of the six finalists, only Ahrends Burton and Koralek explored this option. All of the others proposed an over-ground extension to the existing library, in the area immediately to the south at the edge of College Park, where there are several mature trees.

The trees are retained by the winning scheme, including a giant sycamore which will become the centrepiece of a new south-facing courtyard between the Berkeley Library and the new complex rising up to six storeys above a podium over the basement levels.

It consists of two long blocks - one a "Tower of Books" for storage and the other containing reading rooms overlooking College Park. A much lower third block in what the architects describe as "three dramatic sculptural forms" will house a conservation laboratory.

"Together, they represent a clear and appropriate representation of library use . . . like `books' in a line", they said. A glazed atrium is to be installed between the two major blocks through which there will be views of the book stacks from the reading rooms.

The main entrance for students and other readers will be through the Berkeley Library. A separate "tourist route" is planned from a new entry cut into the wall on Nassau Street and skirting the library complex to give access to the Long Room and Book of Kells. A detailed design of the winning scheme is to be presented to Trinity's building committee next month and, assuming this is approved, a planning application will be submitted to Dublin Corporation with a view to completing the project in time for the millennium.

Runners-up in the architectural competition included two Irish firms, Gilroy McMahon and Murray O'Laoire, and three from Britain - Benson and Forsyth, Dixon and Jones and Ahrends Burton Koralek. Foster and Rogers both dropped out at an earlier stage.