Sayers medical Library

My First impressions of this building is that it is very harsh, and sort of menacing looking. It sits in quite a shadowey area and it is made out of  a combination of dark concrete and off white metal shaped as triangles which go up the top of the building, sort of stacking on top of eahother. The shape of these triangles remind me a bit of toblerone chocolate bars. There is a lot of harsh lines and angles incorporated into the design of this building, even seen in the font choice of “futura medium” which has been used to spell out “sayers medicial library”. 

This is written in red, which matches the red trimmings around the edge of the windows and over the bars covering them. I find the bars covering the windows quite an intimidating design feature, I definitely don’t think this building is ugly but it also isn’t exactly what I imagine when I think of a library. It is a great example of modernist design though, incorporating key modernist design principles such as geometric forms, incorporating new materials (concrete, metal) and a lack of ornamentation.

In contrast to the quite fascinating exterior walking into the interior was a bit of a let down, the theme of hard edges and angles did continue into the stair case (which was shaped like a zig zag) but other than that there was no interesting design features- maybe aspects have been re done over the years? I continued to venture upwards to the library though, which once I got there I realized was not really worth the walk up the stairs. The Sayers library area was incredibly plain and not very big, so I continued through it to find the over bridge tunnel that links the library to the hospital. Aside from the minor vertigo I got from walking across it was really cool to be up there looking down at the Sayers building and the pedestrians walking past. I didn’t have a good camera with me, but I think getting a full shot from this angle could look really cool.

Over all I think The sayers Medical Library is a very interesting piece of architecture that links strongly with the modernist era.