Location: Calne, United Kingdom.

Architect: Woods Bagot.

St Mary’s Calne, an independent boarding and day school in Wiltshire, has unveiled its new library, designed to provide an inspiring academic environment that fosters a love of learning, creativity, debate and scholarship. The library is a stand-alone pavilion at the heart of the school, designed to encourage learning and prepare and inspire students for tertiary education. The building layers from solidity to lightness and from internal to external, creating a sense of arrival and then discovery, culminating in framed views of the orchard. The library is planned over two levels, a lively, dynamic ground floor with direct access to the orchard and a quieter, formal upper level for more focused study. The walls are lined with books, reading nooks and display zones, and the ground level is loosely organised into three zones: the living zone, the project zone and the garden zone. The external materials palette comprises brick, glass and timber, while internally, objects are either anchored or floating, with a family of bespoke joinery pieces unifying the design. The building displays the ethos of organic layers, refined spaces, detail and craft, contemporary but with a strong sense of context. The library is part of an existing green space at the heart of the 25-acre campus alongside a mature orchard of nearly thirty apple trees and will complete a cluster of shared facilities including the main reception, Chapel and refectory. The school would like a lively, collaborative hub and academic haven incorporating an innovative, agile learning environment and a home for the school’s reference and fiction book collections. The new building aims to capture the shift from passive, teacher-centred learning to technology-rich, interactive learning.

Photo credit: © Woods Bagot.