Peckham Library



Peckham Library is a library and community building situated in Peckham in south-east London, United Kingdom. It was designed by Alsop and Störmer, engineered by AKT II and won the Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2000.

It is a striking building best imagined as an inverted capital letter 'L', with the upper part supported by thin steel pillars set at apparently random angles. The exterior is clad with pre-patinated copper.

The Stirling Prize judges were impressed with the building's approach. Alsop has taken the plan footprint of a conventional library and elevated it to create a public space beneath the building and to remove the quiet reading space from street level noise. The remaining, supporting buildings on the ground and 1st floors house the information and media centre. The building has five floors in total, with the library service taking up the fourth floor.

The library opened to the public on 8 March 2000, with an official opening by Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, on 15 May 2000.

The building attracted 500,000 visitors in its first year of opening in the wake of its receipt of the prize. This dropped to approximately 420,000 for 2006.

SuperC (Aachen), a student service centre building at the RWTH Aachen in Germany was built in 2006, which has been compared to Peckham Library with a similar L design.