Selwyn College, Cambridge

Over the last twenty years, Selwyn College, founded in 1882, has been expanding its accommodation, conference facilities and library into ‘Ann’s Court’ and October 2021 saw the completion of that court as it celebrated the opening of the Bartlam Library accommodated in the shell of this new building, designed by Porpyrhios Associates, for Luke Hughes has designed all the library furniture. It’s a neo-classical building, even faintly post-modern, rather than Gothic Revival (the style of most of the buildings at the College).

The aim for the Luke Hughes team was to create a new college library interior so it can be a source of pride for the college and a delight to work in, for staff, fellowship, students and visitors, expressing something of what the college wants to project about itself for the next half-century or more. The form of the design language relates to the classical architectural form of the building. Selwyn students are now offered stimulating new workspaces along with a mix of conventional books and digital resources.

This project is now dedicated as The Bartlam Library, in recognition of particularly generous donations from Tom Bartlam (who studied Law at the college in the mid-sixties), along with more than 1,000 other individual donors.

The scope of university library furniture included the classic Folio stacking chairs for the readers and cable-managed library reading tables, carrell work-spaces, our streamlined modular bookcase system providing shelving for 30,000 books and periodicals, teaching and computer rooms, task and ambient lighting. It also included some curved sofas that can be easily re-arranged for poetry readings, evening seminars or small chamber concerts.

It is proving highly popular with students, and, in the words of the Master, Roger Mosey: This is a once-in-a-generation project for Selwyn: the creation of a building that complements our history and serves the future needs of our community. It has transformed the northwest of the college – and inside there is now a library fit for the 21st century and beyond.

Photos courtesy and © David Valinsky

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