This building needed to make a statement about the future of higher education at the recently established Liverpool Polytechnic. It needed to assume the role of focal point for the academic community. And it needed to uplift; more, it needed to alter how academic libraries were considered. Not books and silence, but books and computers, communication, energy, learning. More life. Universal now, but a leap forward then, the first of its kind.

The atrium sets the tone. Over four floors it maps the place out, allows in the light, connects with the gardens. The building is contemporary in design, but still makes careful reference to neighbouring buildings and is completely in scale with its surroundings. It links to other parts of the university through the creation of a pocket park and footpaths within the square. Over four floors it is ‘student-friendly’, flexible to change, and adaptable for meetings and exhibitions. Naturally lit workstations encourage group study. Books and computers ‘commingle’. A covered bridge links to an annexed library, and the building is orientated carefully towards a derelict church in case of future extension.

The project won a 1994 RIBA Award for Architecture and a 1996 Civic Trust Award.

The Aldham Robarts Centre at Liverpool John Moores University (formerly Liverpool Polytechnic) was probably the first of a new generation of university libraries in which computers and internet access were ‘commingled’ with book study.
 
One of the university’s key objectives was for the architecture of the LRC to make a statement about the future of higher education in the recently established institution. In addition, because of its position and pivotal role as a common resource, it was also intended to be a focal point for the academic community, replacing laboratory and lecture theatre as the learning hub of the institution.  
 
The brief inverted the traditional library ratio of book storage to study space, with a concept of ‘commingling’ IT and hard-copy use. The concept of silence in the reading room was also abandoned in favour of the buzz of industrious study.

In 1993 the recently formed Liverpool Polytechnic, later Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) was a coming-together of city colleges (commerce, technology, art and teaching) with a collection of remaindered municipal buildings spread across the city and suburbs, representing outdated learning and accommodation strategies. As part of a wider drive to consolidate the new institution into three city centre locations, new libraries or learning resource centres (LRCs) were required. At the same time the Polytechnic needed a physical signifier to establish its presence and identity.

The brief for the first of the new LRCs – the Aldham Robarts Centre was led by the Head of Library Services, Don Revill, and a senior architecture tutor, Geoff Hackman.  Both shared a rare mix of vision and pragmatism. Significantly, Don’s approach was revolutionary, if not ‘heretical’ in library circles. At the time books were kept in libraries where silence reigned and computers were accessed at computing centres. The brief for the Aldham Roberts Centre was based on learning not reading; a place where books and computers were ‘commingled’, where group study was recognised and accommodated as part of project-based learning, where the librarian’s first priority was coaching users, not keeping books. This enabled new technologies to be introduced and in a profession where silence in libraries was mandatory, re-focused on serious study. A decade and half later, such activity is considered normal but it was still revolutionary thinking at the time. Geoff Hackman was desperate for the new institution to commit to excellence in its architectural commissions, after some early forays into developer led sub PoMo projects.

“There should be a place with great tables on which the librarian can put the books, and the reader should be able to take the book and go to the light.”
 
Louis Kahn, talking about his Phillips Exeter Academy Library.
 
A glazed atrium faces the campus garden at the crossroads of pedestrian routes through the building. In the atrium, floor levels are visually connected – allowing visitors to orientate themselves, while clearly seeing how the building works. A celebratory staircase at the centre directly accesses all floors. The staircase helps to organise the building, with two major cross routes established at all levels. It spirals down to the lower ground level, serves upper floors and provides access to an enclosed bridge which links the adjacent Aquinas Building. The Aquinas was incorporated and adapted when policy changes during construction added a further library into the facility.  

The four levels are split into two zones: the upper floors contain book stacks and ‘premium’ quiet-study spaces; the ground floor and basement are characterised by noisier, more diverse activity – issue and return, group study and social areas.
 
Study spaces, in groups of four, are arranged alongside window openings around the edge of the floors, so the books are, quite literally, ‘brought to the light’. The deeper-plan areas accommodate either the book stacks or group study spaces. Book stacks, study tables and VDU-equipped workstations are completely interchangeable.

The building is essentially adaptable. Whilst it appears as a square plan, it is effectively L-shaped, served by an atrium space in the elbow of the plan, with a staircase at the corner of the joint. The wings of the building are 15 metres deep and planned to a 1.5 metre module around a ‘tartan’ structural grid. Each bay is served by drop down mechanical ventilation and lighting trays, integrated with the ceiling system; a sophisticated high specification office solution, procured opportunistically when the market for office buildings suddenly collapsed during the detail design of the building. Consequently, glazed rooms have been erected and dismantled during the life of the building, taking advantage of the high levels of daylight on each floor and the planned services infrastructure.

Concern that the 5,500 m2 of space would dominate its surroundings resulted in the decision to use the external expression of the internal ‘streets’ to subdivide the main form of the building into four blocks. The natural slope of the site was used to create a lower-ground floor, with the ground around the building cut away in order to allow daylight to penetrate the double-height perimeter space which connects the ground and lower-ground floors.
 
The briefing and design process was highly iterative, with a series of unplanned studies shaping the aspirational brief into a deliverable requirement, whilst the massing and layout of the building was developed in response to function and context. 

Originally intended to replace a derelict church on Rodney Street (Liverpool’s ‘Harley Street’), the University was subsequently convinced that the setting and operational needs of the building dictated a larger site. Immediately behind the church, a tired gymnasium, no longer of significant use, was chosen instead as the site for the library, so presenting the opportunity to formally relate the library’s design to the shell of the church as a future expansion opportunity. The new site also sat within the large, wooded garden space of the Notre Dame Convent, which had been acquired by the Polytechnic. The concept of the building as a gateway to learning then took on further symbolism – as a gateway from the wider city to the closed religious space, from the street to a garden, from the chaos of the wider world to the concentration and order of mind and thought.

The Rodney Street Conservation Area is dominated by Liverpool’s cathedrals and characterised by Georgian brick terraces of three and four storeys. The new building would have a footprint and bulk which was vastly larger than its surroundings. Contextual and figure ground studies, plus an elevational study of the surrounding streets ran in parallel with development of the building’s functional plan. The ultimate layout, massing and elevations acknowledge the rhythms and texture of the areas without slavishly copying detail, form or material. The organising atrium enjoys views of Gibberd’s Roman Catholic Cathedral towering over the convent buildings and immediately axial to one of the cross routes established within the building is the dominant bulk of Gilbert-Scott’s Anglican Cathedral.

When opened, the Aldham Robarts Learning Resource Centre, ‘LRC1’, proved an immediate success, with over 2,500 reader visits per day. Subsequently, The Avril Robarts Centre, ‘LRC2’, was developed on the Liverpool John Moores University’s City Campus.

The fundamental learning which has secured the ultimate success of this building lies in the singular engagement between the client and the designers at the outset of the project. Unencumbered by conflicting management concerns and committed unswervingly to realise a vision, to satisfy a perceived need with excellence, the building which was both affordable on completion and in use transcends simple operational requirements by developing a facility which is in every sense sustainable.

The Aldham Robarts Learning Resource Centre was adopted as an icon of contemporary architecture when Liverpool assembled its bid for 1999 City of Architecture status in the period 1993–94. It won a 1994 RIBA Award for Architecture and a 1996 Civic Trust Award.