Dutch firm beats all-star line-up including Foster + Partners, OMA and Foreign Office Architects
Mecanoo has been named the surprise winner of the competition to design the 拢193m Birmingham library.
The Dutch practice, considered an outsider in the high-profile competition, has beaten Foreign Office Architects, Foster + Partners, Hopkins, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Wilkinson Eyre to win the contract.
Although a well-known practice in its native Holland (where the library pictured here was built), Mecanoo is a virtual newcomer to the UK market. Its one UK commission to date has been a 拢17m residential project in Sheffield for developer Artisan.
Brian Gambles, assistant director of culture at Birmingham council, who headed the team responsible for deciding who got the library contract, had said earlier: 鈥淚'll be looking for the design team that is hungriest and really wants to do the job.鈥�
The announcement marks the end of what is the third design competition for the library.
The shortlist was notable for featuring none of the three architects - Make, Glenn Howells Associates and Adjaye Associates - shortlisted in 2006 to design a previous incarnation of the library at Centenary Square.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, which won an even earlier design competition for the library in 2002, also not built, is understood not to have entered this competition.
In October 2007 the leader of Birmingham council, Cllr Mike Whitby, unveiled proposals to deliver the Library of Birmingham on a shared site with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
The 拢193m project will be developed on land adjoining the repertory theatre, with the library and theatre joining together and sharing a number of facilities to create a centre for knowledge, learning and culture.
Francine Houben, founding partner of Mecanoo, said: 鈥淲e are excited to have been selected to design a building destined to become the social heart of Birmingham. Mecanoo loves to create unforgettable collective spaces, inside and outside. It is a challenge to realise this major project in Centenary Square. We hope to create a people鈥檚 palace, warm and welcoming. I hope it will be loved by the Birmingham citizens.鈥�
The building of the new library has been highly controversial. As well as the history behind the two previous abandoned designs, there has been a campaign to save Birmingham's brutalist Central Library - designed by architect John Madin and opened in 1974. Various organisations and lobby groups, including the Twentieth Century Society, are keen to preserve the library.
But Birmingham council has asked the culture secretary Margaret Hodge not to list the library, described by the Birmingham Civic Society as 鈥渁 monumental, brutalist incinerator鈥�.
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