Breaking the mould – Stakeholder engagement to build a case for, and then deliver the transformation of a 1960s library into a 21st century library and learning space

By 2005 the University of Kent’s traditional 1960s library was no longer fully supporting the diverse needs of the University’s academic community and satisfaction levels amongst users whose needs extended beyond silent individual study reflected the building’s limitations. Re-imagining the university library and transforming our service offer and the way we use our physical spaces was an initial response to the challenge of meeting our diverse user needs, but by doing so we more than doubled daily footfalls and started to fail users in new ways.

The eventual solution of a flexible 21st Century Library would require us to challenge our perceptions and existing practice still further, broaden the stakeholder group, and form a specialist team of Library and IT staff, architects, engineers and other professionals to develop solutions to our complex and challenging problem.

This paper describes the role of collaboration in the various stages of the project from initial envisioning and business case development through the design development stages and eventual building works and occupation and covers activities led by the client team and those led by Penoyre and Prasad, the project architects.