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Architects: Mitchell Taylor Workshop
- Area: 800 m²
Text description provided by the architects. Mitchell Taylor Workshop have an increasing interest in education buildings, that grew out of working on projects like the (RIBA award winning) ‘Room 13’ project. Kings College in Taunton commissioned the new 500m2 library in 2008. The site is tight and reasonably complex: existing listed buildings had to be retained at ground level and were enveloped in a jigsaw like fashion by the new building. At ground floor are offices, resource spaces and teaching spaces, and at first floor is the library. The site dictated a deep plan building, which ultimately drove the architectural solution – a series of lofty saw tooth north lights that provide large levels of natural light and ventilation. This also evolved from a series of earlier proposals which were more ‘conventionally radical’: it is often easier for architects – us included – to proposal an alien, radical piece of design, and our first proposals were for a shimmering, brass and copper clad box with a series of continuous fins that varied as to the level of light control they provided.
