The Hive, Worcester

The Hive

General information
Type	Library
Architectural style	Postmodern
Address	Sawmill Walk, The Butts
Town or city	Worcester
Country	England
Opening	2 July 2012 (2012-07-02)
Cost	£29.7 million
Client	Worcestershire County Council University of Worcester
Technical details
Floor area	12,371m²
Design and construction
Architecture firm	Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
Structural engineer	Hyder Consulting Atelier One
Services engineer	Max Fordham
Main contractor	Galliford Try
Awards and prizes	BCI Sustainability Award (2013) RIBA West Midland Award (2013)
Website
www.thehiveworcester.org

The Hive, is a large golden-coloured building in Worcester, England, housing the Worcester Library.

Background and finances

Designed by the architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS), it opened to the public on 2 July 2012 and was officially opened by HM The Queen in the following week.

Costing £60-million, The Hive was the subject of a complex Private finance initiative programme, which brought together the designers with the building contractors Galliford Try Ltd and the mechanical and electrical engineering consultants Max Fordham LLP. Originally developed in Australia in the 1980s, PFI is a method of procurring the design and construction of major public buildings by using private sector funding and contracting services. The Hive's joint commissioning clients were the University of Worcester and Worcestershire County Council. Funding was also provided by the National Lottery and the British government's Department for Culture Media & Sport and Department for Education.

It was to be an integrated public and university reference and loan library, linked to the county's Archaeological and Archive services. In addition, a 'one-stop-shop' information centre - 'The Hub' - would be operated from within the building by Worcestershire's County and District Council Services.

Once The Hive's design team had been assembled, the local authority's project managers organised a fact-finding tour of possible paradigms, with visits to The Black Diamond, Glasgow's Burrell Collection and the Heellis Building, Swindon, headquarters of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

Popularity

The Hive received 471,816 visitors in its first six months of operation, an indication that it will achieve its target of one million visitors in its first year. However, the five departments it houses were previously held at separate locations so it is inevitable that this one location will now attract considerable foot fall.It should also be noted that these are not unique users but as the count included users of the library going outside and then coming back in again on the same day- the same person could be counted many times. Many users are also compelled to use the building regardless of their feelings towards it, as the services they seek are inside. With 94.5 hours a week of operation, it has the longest weekly operating hours of any library in the UK. To keep the building running, a maximum of 50 staff are on duty, but users have complained about the difficulty of finding staff. In June 2013 The Hive won an RIBA Architectural Award.It has been noted though that all the external areas of the building such as the balcony areas have remained closed since the Hive was opened due to reasons unknown and the children outside story Island area had to be upgraded after opening as it was felt to be unsafe. That area is now only open at special request. However, the Hive has attracted considerable criticism from the students and the general public.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] The student body has also voiced its complaints on the Hive's Facebook page, listing the many concerns they have and explaining that their previous library was better suited to their needs.

External appearance

The Hive has an irregular external appearance, created by its gold-coloured cladding and distinctive roof profile, formed by seven upward-facing 'cones'. These are said to have been fashioned to mimic the outline of the popular Malvern Hills. 60x60cm alloy 'tiles', made from recycled copper, cover more than 11,000sqm of the building's walls and roof. The cladding which covers The Hive's horizontal facades is interrupted by large areas of double glazing in order to let as much natural light as possible into the interior.

Layout and public facilities

The total floor area of the 5-storey building covers 13,253sqm. Located at the southernmost point of the city centre, The Hive adjoins the line of the old city wall and overlooks the River Severn.

The basement level, housing the county's archive stores, conservation department and archaeological services, is one metre above the Severn's 100-year flood level, though several flood prevention safeguards have been incorporated into the structure and the adjoining landscaping. More than 26,000 records are stored in seven climate-controlled strongrooms, including the Marriage Bond between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, dated 28 November 1582.

A large paved forecourt leads to The Hive's main public entrance, a naturally-lit central atrium paved with stone from the Forest of Dean, with The Hub, a café and a spacious Children's Library all set around a staircase finished in Ash wood. This is one continuous flight of 42 steps, interrupted only by three intermediate landings, which rises up through the whole building. Its structural support is provided by cross-laminated timber panels, making it an all-wood entity. Unfortunately users have complained about sound travelling to the various floors as the result of the open atrium that acts like funnel.

FCBS's colour consultant Libby Lloyd has introduced a vivid palette into the children's spaces, many 'borrowed' from historic ranges produced by the city's famous Royal Worcester potteries, including a chrome yellow Story Pit, small timber-framed alcoves for parent-child reading and a castellated outdoor Story Island. It has been noted that the cloth lined timber alcoves have already had to be recovered due the materials used being unsuitable for the environment they were put in 'Explore the Past' is the theme of the building's second level, with a number of display and presentation techniques used around the open-plan area, including pendant 'sound domes' replaying recorded extracts from the county's sound archive of oral history. It is interesting to note that in spite of this substantial investment the county archives lost a national competition to a much smaller and less well funded charitable archive.^[6] The Hive's principal public lending and reference spaces are located on the next level, where there are arrays of computers. There are a total of 350 computers distributed around the building, for joint use by members of the public and the university's students. Over 200,000 volumes are housed in book stacks whose ends contain glass-sided display cases. Two large meeting rooms and an area for magazine and newspaper reading are also on this level. Beneath the rooflights is an attic space containing Special Collections and a quiet study area.

Green issues

The environmental brief given to the design team was that a 50% renewable energy figure had to be achieved for The Hive, which would be difficult considering the planned popularity of the building. To accommodate the energy demands expected from climate changes, the building's environmental needs were 'future proofed' on UK meteorological projections up to the year 2050.

None of the spaces in the building used by the general public have air conditioning. The large window areas provide sufficient natural light for low-energy electric lighting to be kept to a minimum, reducing both energy demands and ambient heat creation. The seven roof-mounted cones - as well as doubling as rooflights - encourage the upward movement of stale air by stack effect, mechanically aided by fans concealed beneath timber slats in the atrium floor. To safeguard against contra-flows created by external wind turbulence, which might negate this stack effect, the architects commissioned a scale model of one of the cones to be tested in a wind tunnel at Cardiff University.

A rainwater harvesting system feeds all the building's toilets and the required quietness levels needed in The Hive's extensive study areas are achieved through vertical decorative Ash 'fins' mounted on sound absorption blankets fixed to the structure's concrete soffits.

The main heating source in winter is a 550 kW biomass boiler, with emergency back-up being provided by three 250 kW gas-fired boilers. In extreme summer conditions, river water can be pumped into the basement of the building, passed across concrete heat exchangers, with the cooled air ducted up into the central atrium. Temperature checks are maintained on the water returned to the river to comply with the UK Environment Agency's fish protection regulations.

In modern business practice the term Synergy is sometimes used to explain how the resulting conclusion of a successful operation can turn out to be greater than the sum of the constituent parts. The American Buckminster Fuller was the first western philosopher and futurologist to use this term in an architectural context, with particular reference to the energy efficiency and sustainability of buildings. The popularity of The Hive and the meeting of its challenging energy performance targets may yet lead this library to become one of the few UK examples of synergy in a public building.

Surrounding space

As well as being the county's primary repository of archaeological finds, The Hive is sited on a historic part of the city of Worcester. The area's name, The Butts, refers to the open edge-of-city space knows as Archery butts which were designated for longbow archery practice in medieval times (23 UK towns still retain this as a place name); evidence of Roman iron ore smelting was discovered and preserved; and in Victorian times part of the site housed the city's cattle market.

In order to utilise the external spaces around The Hive for leisure and learning, landscaping consultants Grant Associates have surrounded the library with plantings of Black Pear (the county fruit of Worcestershire), black poplars, cherries, oaks, pollarded willows and medieval fruits. Tracts of wild flowers and grassed areas close to the building will act as supplementary 'coolants' for fresh air being drawn in at basement level during the summer; and for future fuel for The Hive's biomass boiler, a large plantation of willows has been established alongside the building.

Controversies and awards

Since opening complaints have arisen from the public regarding limited choice of books, spending on non essential peripherals and the fundamental ambition of expecting academic research to occur in unmonitored and unrestricted open public spaces.^[7]^[8]

The Hive won the prize for the best new-build project of the year in the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) Building Performance Awards 2013. It was shortlisted alongside six other buildings including the Titanic in Belfast and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. The Hive was recognised for its good practice, energy performance use of passive design and renewable technologies to create a sustainable building while delivering a high level of comfort and performance for its visitors.^[9]

The building has scooped Sustainable Project of the Year in the Building Awards 2013, fighting off stiff competition from seven other contenders. The critics described the Hive as “truly impressive”, praising its design, which is based on allowing as much sunlight into the building as possible. They were also impressed by the gold-clad cones which contain glazed rooflights and vertical glazing, as well as the low energy lighting. The use of the river Severn for water chillers, and a rainwater tank, that collects water dripping off the roof to flush the toilets were also factors in the award.^[10]

References

External links

The Hive website

Coordinates: 52°11′38″N 2°13′33″W / 52.19378°N 2.22594°W / 52.19378; -2.22594