Fear over proposed alterations to 2000 Stirling Prize winner sparks Twentieth Century Society bid
Campaign group the Twentieth Century Society has submitted an application to get grade II*-listed status for Will Alsop’s Stirling Prize-winning Peckham Library, prompted by proposals for alterations to the building.
The group said plans to replace existing extractor fans with new air-source heat-pump equipment and acoustic enclosures on the roof of the south London landmark would “negatively impact” the significance of the building, which won the highest prize in UK architecture in 2000.
Designed by Alsop at the Alsop & Störmer practice, the five-storey building has a distinctive rooftop, that the C20 Society says would be particularly harmed by the proposals.
“From higher vantage points, the air source heat pumps and associated enclosures would be visible and disruptive to the otherwise cohesive roofscape, competing and obscuring its artistic features,” it said.
“An alternative location for the new equipment should be found which would have a less harmful impact on the building’s overall heritage significance.”
The C20 Society said it was in favour of sympathetic measures to make Peckham Library more energy efficient, however.
Its listing bid comes days after Alsop’s Le Frégate Cafe in Jersey was awarded grade II status – making the 1997 structure both the youngest listed building in the British Isles and the first Alsop project to be added to the national register.
C20 Society director Catherine Croft said Peckham Library was one of Alsop’s most important works.
“Peckham Library radically redefined what a library was. Putting accessibility and nurturing a community at the heart of its mission, with innovative and playful architecture that makes it a distinctive, much-loved landmark,” she said.
“The recently listed La Frégate is Alsop at his most frivolous, and while Peckham may look similarly light-hearted, it’s an intensely serious building with bold social ambition, deliberately turning its back on the past.
“When Alsop collected the Stirling Prize for this building in 2000, he reputedly mothed ‘Fuck the past!’ at the TV cameras. Now this provocation of history is history itself.”
3 Readers' comments