the james ussher library at trinity college dublin

Irish Arts Review

The James Ussher Library at Trinity College DublinAuthor(s): Raymund RyanSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), pp. 82-89Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25502839 .

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Almost three hundred years after the

construction of TCD's first great . . K

library, the new Ussher library is p>-<

ready to open. RAYMUND RYAN

finds that Trinity College 'has

balanced the maintenance of its

inheritance and progressive

architectural patronage with a plomba '**$

Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ussher Library Competition 1997. Completed 2002

Architects:

Builders:

Collaborators:

Structural Engineers: Service Engineers:

Quantity Surveyors:

Photographer:

McCullough Mulvin

Architects

and Keane Murphy Duff

Michael McNamara & Co.

McCullough Mulvin:

Niall McCullough, Valerie

Mulvin, Ruth O'Herlihy, Sinead Burke; Keane

Murphy Duff: Mike

Kinsella, Gary O'Hare, Keith McMullan,

Stephen Mason

O'Connor Sutton Cronin

Homan O'Brien

Brendan Merry and

Partners

Christian Richters

Vti

**??m;*



ARCHITECTURE

N

gi -

w 1TRINITY

COLLEGE,OLD LIBRARY: Thomas

Burgh, 1712-1732.



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A?fe?

Kit

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5 Trinity College, Ussher Library:

Granite shards of

the new library.

At the heart of most educational institutions, and per

haps even at the heart of built civilisation, is the

library. From the famous Bibliotheca Alexandrina at

the mouth of the Nile to the havens of learning protected

within such medieval monasteries as that at St Gallen, the

library continues to be both an actual repository of books and

ideal architectural space. At Trinity College Dublin, the Old

Library is one of the great artefacts of Anglo-Irish culture; its

recent neighbour, the Berkeley, is a consummate example of

mid-century Brutalism. Now this elite pair is joined by a third

free-standing library - the Ussher

- as Trinity reconfigures itself

for life in this electronic 21st century.

Anybody frequenting Dublin's south city centre is undoubt

edly already conscious of the Ussher's crystalline presence

immediately behind the University's railings on Nassau Street.

The new building seems to split into three granite-skinned

shards pushing south from the pensive sculptural mass of the

Berkeley (Fig 5). These thin sheer surfaces are clad such that a

rhythm is set up by the dispersal of vein-like construction

joints, a geometric cadence augmented by sporadic voids fram

ing windows behind. From one crevice between the three

blocks soars a splayed hall about which the Ussher's interior is

generated; within another, the architects have inserted a glazed

footbridge - a ponte dei sospiri for Dublin academia?

From Phoenix to Seattle, from the somewhat lumpen empiri

cism of Colin St John Wilson's British Library on London's

Euston Road to the vitreous Cartesian symbolism of Dominique

Perrault's Biblioth?que de France in Paris, the semantic power of

libraries today is closely aligned with their urban settings. At

Trinity, the fragmented geometries of the Ussher result to a large

extent from that library's context. As such, one recognises con

textual traits symptomatic of much recent critical architecture in

Ireland. Like an iceberg emerging at the nexus of architectural

inheritance, landscape (College Park) and the public realm of the

street, the Ussher is also a Machine To Read In.

In a series of articles for Country Life, Edward McParland

rightly describes Thomas Burgh's library as 'stupendous'. Begun

in 1712, the Old Library is both an independent architectural

object and the boundary of that remarkable collegiate space clas

sified by McParland as 'a vast open square...of granite and brick,

cobblestones and lawn, trees, sky and (usually) quietness' (Fig 1).

Essentially one long double-height room raised above an arcade,

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW SUMMER 2002



Burgh's library was altered in 1860 when Deane and Woodward,

in an 'extraordinary synthesis of Augustan classicism and

Victorian Romanesque,' modified its upper zone and added a con

tiguous barrel vault. 'What had been superb,' McParland writes,

'they made sublime."

In 1961, the University decided to construct a second library

alongside Burgh's then 250-year-old masterpiece. As the result of

an ambitious international design competition, the project was

awarded to Paul Koralek, a young recent graduate of London's

Architectural Association.2 If Deane and Woodward's modifica

tion of the Old Library suggests the sublime in some pre-modern

way, a way that the Trinity alumnus Edmund Burke might well

have recognised, the Berkeley combines robust materiality with

internalised pockets of natural light to invoke its own visceral

response.3 Informed by the more emotional Brutalist tendency

(from 'concret brut' -

exposed concrete) of Le Corbusier's post

War work, the Berkeley is a late-Modern monument (Fig 2).

The Old Library is in effect and in practice a museum. The var

ious ancient tomes, including some of Celtic Ireland's most impor

tant illuminated manuscripts, are stacked in formal regimen to

either side of an architectural volume far grander than required by

?mere functionality. In comparison, the

Berkeley - achieved by Koralek with his

former classmates Peter Ahrends and

Richard Burton - prioritises the reader

and the experience of reading over the

previously sacrosanct accommodation of

books. Ahrends Burton and Koralek used

in situ concrete stairs, 'light chimneys' and

tailored furniture to lead the library user

from the entrance plinth through their

multi-dimensional interior to individual

study carrels or occasional bay windows

with views to the outside world.

One of many classical busts lining the

great room of the Old Library is of James

Ussher (1581-1656), radical theologian,

Archbishop of Armagh, and donor of one

of the library's foundation collections:

the Bibliotheca Usseriana (Fig 11). Ussher

now gives his name to this latest library

building, awarded through competition

in 1997 to McCullough Mulvin

Architects working in conjunction with

the long-established Dublin practice,

Keane Murphy Duff. Members of the

Group 91 masterplan for Temple Bar,

McCullough and Mulvin are identified

with the Eurocentric and contextually

driven debates of recent years. Their

architecture is in part figurative, deriving

clues from history and locality.

Before instigating the Ussher, Trinity

did in fact realise a third major library.

Again designed by Ahrends Burton and

Koralek, the Lecky is found in the basement and ground floor

levels of the Arts Building and was built in the late 1970s to

designs again by Ahrends Burton and Koralek. (The practice is

currently adding a penthouse to this block between Nassau

Street and Fellows Square.) The edifice by McCullough Mulvin

and Keane Murphy Duff has not only to hold its own, formally or perhaps even sculpturally, between these quite distinct build

ings but must connect them internally. Thus the strategic deci

sion in the design of the Ussher to extend the Berkeley's

ceremonial plinth as a deep datum within which the secure activ

ities of the library system can take place.

The architects retained the primary entrance to this new

library sequence within the Berkeley (from which an under

ground passage also links back to the Old Library). The Ussher,

therefore, has no front door. Library users will typically enter the

Berkeley at plinth level, then descend via a newly-inserted stairs to

a hall interred between the Berkeley, the Lecky, and the Ussher.

This hall, illuminated from above by a splayed pyramidal

rooflight, functions as an internal crossroads and orientation

chamber (Fig 4). Students and staff then proceed into the primary

gap between the Ussher's shard-like forms, a sheer chasm rising


Rooflight at level 4.

SUMMER 2002 IRISH ARTS REVIEW 85



86 IRISH ARTS REVIEW SUMMER 2002



THE USSHER LIBRARY AT TRINITY COLLEGE

five storeys in height and dropping through two extensive base

ments so that light really does penetrate to even the lowest floors.

From the exterior, the Ussher is sited such that tourists to

Trinity now access the University through a new gate and across

a small drawbridge from Nassau Street. Visitors first purchase

tickets from a corner booth in the southwest corner of the main

new block and enjoy panoramic views of College Park from a

trapezoidal terrace, before proceeding between the Ussher's east

fa?ade and a line of mature, deciduous trees to approach the Old

Library. Facing the Park, the Ussher's east elevation plays a com

positional game with its neighbour. The Ussher is almost entirely

glazed, the Berkeley opaque. Whereas the latter appears as a

carved solid, the Ussher floats towards the Berkeley as a flush, at

times ephemeral, lantern (Figs 2 <Sc 3).

The Ussher is conscious of its chronological setting, its formal

and programmatic relationships. However, one might also claim

that here McCullough Mulvin with Keane Murphy Duff develop a contextual architecture about the evolving symbolism of light.

According to the University's website, the Ussher will have

'360,000 volumes of monographs and research journals.'4 In

recent architectural culture - in this era perhaps too easily cate

gorised as Postmodern - fragmentation has been a recurrent

theme or methodology. First in the historicist collages of, for

instance, James Stirling (Britain) and Michael Graves (United

States) in the late 1970s; then in the quasi-philosophical move

ment known as Deconstructivism a decade later. The fragmenta

tion of the Ussher Library suggests in its site strategy some intent

of the former and in its shard-like thinness and hint of the

dynamic, a stylistic affinity with the latter. Holding such possible

theoretical nuances together, however, is the tall central block

orthogonal to the grid of Front Square and visibly filled with

books. It signals the primacy of the book (Fig 7).


View of the reader

block from the

atrium looking south.


Conservation

laboratory with

north lights.

9 McCullough

Mulvin & Keane

Murphy Duff:

Plan of Ussher

Library at Podium

Level.

Facing the Park, the Ussher's east elevation ?^ plays a compositional game with its

*^^:v neighbour. The Ussher is almost entirely I Qf

"";;:?~

glazed, the Berkeley opaque. i

SUMMER 20 0 2 IRISH ARTS REV



the ussher library at trinity college

IE


Basement reading room with natural

light through glass lenses.

11 Bust of

James Ussher

(1581-1656). Old

Library, Trinity

College, Dublin.

12 McCullough

Mulvin & Keane

Murphy Duff: Long section of the

Ussher (right) and

Berkeley Libraries

(left), Trinity

College.


Night shot of reader

block.

In plan, this Tower of Books is a rectilinear anchor off which

the smallest constituent of the Ussher - the Conservation

Laboratory towards the Arts Block - is splayed to align with

Nassau Street (Fig 9). To the east, overlooking College Park, the

most vitreous and transparent fragment of the library contains

the principal reading rooms. Its splayed geometry flips or mirrors

that of the Conservation Laboratory and helps both to focus

views to the middle of College Park and frame the new interstitial

plaza found between the Ussher, the Berkeley, and the 1979 Arts

Block. In section, visitors arrive at the vertiginous atrium, see it

crossed by glass-balustraded bridges that link book storage areas

(to the west) with the reading terraces (to the east) glazed without

obstruction from floor to ceiling (Figs 7 6k 12). The sides of the atrium -

the skeletal flanks of its columns and

floor slabs - are clad in black American walnut (Fig 7). As a refer

ence to the deep organic tones of the woodwork already furnishing

the Old Library, the walnut, together with the solid red carpeting,

introduces a note of warmth into this interior of glass and exposed

concrete ceilings. Oddly, the walnut siding stops at entry level and

does not descend down through the lower floors. Bookstacks are

pushed flush with the atrium so that they read as a sheer cliff of

books. This is the terrain that the library's users will now negoti

ate: a comfortable horizontal progression, towards the reading

zone, skewered by the dramatic book-lined chasm.

Throughout history, the architecture of libraries has been espe

cially conscious of its own symbolism (The Library as Temple;

The Library as Open Book at the Biblioth?que de France; The

Library as the Sun God Ra at the current reincarnation of Egypt's

Alexandria Library). Trinity's librarian, Bill Simpson, talks of the

Ussher's 'seamless environment', of the 'shift from print to elec

tronic resources' demanding a 'hospitality' to new technologies

and 'flexibility' in use.4 To this end, each of the Ussher's 750

reader spaces is wired for laptop use. Specially-designated Quiet

Areas only underline the omnipresence of advanced communica

tion tools in education and in communal space today.

At twilight, the illuminated interior of the Ussher is clearly vis

ible from College Park - a deliberate exposure, by the archi

tects, of the library as a stacked electronic billboard (Fig 13)? Not everything of course is entirely ephemeral. In the upper

reaches of the Tower of Books, a post-graduate zone is cre

ated about an internal double-height void wrapped in walnut

and linked by its own central stairs. To the west, the

Conservation Laboratory is angled in both plan and section

to reinforce gently a tree-filled space between the Arts Block

and Nassau Street (Fig 8). Conceptually, its roof is a single

plate cut and folded up. As with the inventively-composed

panels of black rubber flooring about exit door and service

I areas, there is a characteristic planarity about most aspects

of this project.

The Conservation Laboratory functions to protect both

ancient and modern manuscripts - a medieval text, perhaps,

next to a score by Gerald Barry. A different kind of protec

tion is afforded by screens laid across window openings

recessed into the Park fa?ade. Made from a woven stainless

steel used in escalators, these protect against any unofficial

ejection of books from the library. At or just below Park level

are suites of offices for the library staff with more orthodox

windows punched out towards College Park. Below again, in

the basement, is the University's Map Room.

The Oxford Universal Dictionary defines a library as 'a

H place set apart to contain books for reading, study, or refer

ence.' In the contemporary world, that sense of the library

as an autonomous or isolated object seems less relevant. Rem

Koolhaas -

today's most influential international architect -

recently wrote of his Seattle Public Library project that 'in an age

where information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultane

ity of all media, and the professionalism of their presentation and

interaction, that will make the Library new.'5

With the obvious exception of one stunted Civil Engineering

building on College Park, Trinity College has balanced the main

tenance of its inheritance and progressive architectural patronage

with aplomb. McCullough Mulvin and Keane Murphy Duff have

now given Trinity a facility that beckons from its complex histor

ical setting far into the future. The Ussher Library is literally multi-faceted. Only time and use will determine its true quality.?

Raymund Ryan is an architect teaching at UCD. A contributing editor to Blueprint, he is co-author of Building T?te Modern (2000) and author of Cool Construction

(2001). He is also Irish Commissioner for the Venice Architectural Biennale.

1 E McParland, The Buildings of Trinity College Dublin', Country Life (London

1977). 2 The Architect's Journal ( London : 15 J u ne 1961 ). 3 The RIBA Journal (London: Oct 1997). 4 http://www.tcd.ie. 5 http://www.spl.org/lfa/central/oma/OMAbookl299.

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