Reimagining the library - Enfield’s New Urban Room
Last month, Enfield Council in London opened its flag ship Fore Street Living Room – an interim use multi-functional community space designed by Jan Kattein Architects which reimagines libraries for the modern age. Located in the urban heart of Enfield the project was match funded by the council and the GLA Good Growth Fund and opens up a range of new services and opportunities to the communities in and around one of the most deprived high streets in London. The long-term role of Fore Street Living Room is to act as test bed for spatial principles and social networks which will inform a new permanent library and community space in the wider regen masterplan for the Joyce and Snells estate. Before the doors even opened, the project won the prestigious New London Architecture’s Meanwhile Uses Award, testament to valuable fruit the project is already bearing.
It is no news that the vast network of UK libraries is in a tight squeeze. Neither the high street. Both these critical pieces of socio-economic infrastructure have suffered similarly in the face of technological and cultural shifts which have threatened each of their primary functions – libraries whose bookshelves could not match the internet, and high streets that could not compete with the price and ease of internet shopping.
Living Room Fore Street project is a simultaneous response to both issues. Traditional library shelves, formal zoning and the suspended ceiling which compounded the deep floor plan of building, have been stripped out. In its place, an exciting new community space in the heart of the high street, programmed by a community led consortium Fore Street For All!, which becomes reason, destination and catalytic force within this local economic context. A radical new floor plan with folding book-shelves that can pulled back to make room for a diverse evening cultural programme; deliciously heavy red curtains on wavy tracks which can be drawn to create privacy for an embryonic new network of reading groups; a low ply stage that enables the library to become a place for talks and music; a playable children’s library; and perhaps most exciting of all the Living Room ‘shop-front’, which opens the space unambiguously to the high street, and whose large table will host community drop-ins, jobs and skills training and a new ‘in-community’ outpost for the councils Regen teams.
This potential that Enfield Council have seen in the Living Room is perhaps one of the most interesting things about the project. A series of powerful images prepared in the early stages by the architect that were successfully promoted internally caught the imagination of various council teams. There is a natural and obvious role for these kind of projects in creating better lines of communication between the Council and the public: the regen team for the Joyce and Snells estate regeneration will now hold key meetings in the shop-front window, teams be able to work in-community off-site at the Living Room, jobs and skills services will be distributed in workshops held in the space, as well as the more traditional engagement events. Enfield Council staff really want to utilize this space.
One of the likely determinants of the success of the project is in the community collective Fore Street Fore All! who will be leading the programming of the Living Room. This ‘soft’ social and cultural infrastructure has received investment alongside the physical space from the off, meaning that the project has landed running – with a full itinerary of activity bringing the space to life. Greener for All, and Library Sessions Live are some interesting genre-bending events currently listed on the website.
In spite of its radical new clothes, in many ways, the project is boiling the traditional public library back to its core functions. Beyond the books, libraries have been spaces to get out the house and be in the public realm for free – where society has given generously and universally. Libraries have not only been places where people take out books, but places to daily read a newspaper in a favourite quiet corner of a well-designed space, to do homework away from crowded bedrooms shared with multiple siblings and to pass chilly days in the warm and around others. This is how the project gets its name – much like the traditional public house, libraries are public living rooms for the whole community.
The project demonstrates the role that design teams and creative public sector clients can have in the face of seemingly intractable problems. Ambitious projects undertaken in the spirit of calculated experimentation can have profound ripple effects which stretch beyond immediate project. Both the Economic Development teams and Libraries Service will be watching the project closely, not only thinking about the long-term iteration within the Joyce and Snells Masterplan, but with one eye on the rest of their portfolios. In this, they are supported by the unusually rigorous and enlightening evaluation metrics undertaken by the GLA as part of the Good Growth Fund program. This latent R&D potential of projects also represents significant value for public money, that can and should be presented as such to members and the public.
The great challenge will be whether all this thinking and energy can be captured within the final permanent location. As designers we are not well versed in using these kind of real time lessons to inform design, and there is a real risk that the magic and dynamism of this project will be lost in translation. With careful steering by the ambitious and design-literate client there is every chance however that there will be as many important lessons to learn throughout the latter stages of this process too.
For more on the project visit: https://jankattein.com/projects/fore-street/
Image credit Jan Kattein Architects