New spaces for new uses

The Library of Birmingham is a major new cultural development for the 21st century, involving radical architecture and a radical redesign of the architecture of libraries as public spaces. The role of the library as a social and experiential learning hub is explored together with its potential for creative, cultural, enterprise and knowledge development in the modern urban context. The library must move with the grain of the emerging knowledge ecology of the city, cultivating partnerships and testing to the limit the opportunity for co-production of services and content, marrying the physical and digital libraries seamlessly. The concept challenges the institutions of the city and individual citizens to engage with the library to colonise its physical spaces and in so doing redefine the traditional relationships between service provider and customers. Understanding the learning processes which convert information into knowledge is critical to the visualisation of new spaces