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Reclaim the Beach

Part 2 Project 2006
Alison Killing
Rita Muhieddine Chaaban
 Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
This project’s starting point was the contrast between an introverted, intellectual Oxford and the popular culture of extrovert Brighton beach. It looks at the permanence and ephemera of Brighton beach, proposing a library devoted to popular magazines. A periodicals library has a greater accumulation problem than most libraries, so the building is extended each year to accommodate the new additions: one copy of each magazine is kept while the rest are recycled to make cardboard to construct the next part of the library. This is done in a workshop on site, housed in railway carriages that use the existing railway tracks to move along the site with the library.


This is an expanding recycled cardboard periodicals library. It aims to begin the revitalisation of the run down Dukes Mound stretch of Brighton’s beachfront. It brings together the scholar and the beachbum and the creative construction worker. It is at the same time a very enjoyable and gentle spectacle promoting ecological consciousness. The project’s formal development was initiated by making measured drawings of undulating water surfaces. We nominated this project because it engages really well on so many levels, it combines a social and cultural awareness and richness with a very creative and open approach to architectural form and construction.
Tutor(s)
2006
View of outdoor reading area, archive 2006
The site on Brighton beach, for the most part it is derelict and desolate, though it also plays host to a series of prestigious events
The project looks at the permanence and ephemera of Brighton beach proposing a library devoted to popular magazines - it is extended annually to accommodate new additions and is constructed from cardboard made from the recycled magazines of the library
The library grows along a derelict strip between the road and the beach. It then mediates between the two areas, between the events of Madeira Drive and the life of the beach.
Eventually the library will form a strip along this part of the beach. A series of openings in the building allow people to move between the road and the beach and redefine the relationship between the two.
A catenary model was used to find the form of the roof producing a form in pure tension, or pure compression when inverted - ideal for a cardboard structure which carries loads best axially.
The form from the hanging model was then divided up to make a gridshell - a structurally efficient way to produce this form and again good for cardboard because it relies on the transferal of axial loads.
Isometric projection of library. The library provides a series of spaces for reading as well as facilities for people coming to the beach.
The covers of the magazines are used to clad the roof over the main, indoor, areas of the library and transparent paper printed with magazine covers over the outdoor parts - on sunny days the images of the magazines will be projected on the ground
To provide shaded reading areas on the beach, out of the glare of the sun, canopies were developed. They took the form of waves on the site and were developed using the same physical form-finding techniques as the main library, using fabric under tension
Section through library - showers, lockers, changing, outdoor reading room, indoor reading room.
Elevation showing the next phase of the library being built. The magazines are converted into building materials in a workshop on site, housed in railway carriages which use the existing Volks railway tracks to move along the site with the library.
Plan of the library, cut at 5m
View of the library from Marine Parade.
View of the indoor reading room, current periodicals.
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