Ussher Library

With the official opening tomorrow, now would be a good time to go see the Ussher. There has (quite literally) been an army of maintainance people crawling all over it this week, hanging paintings, painting walls, power-washing the Berkely etc. The Ussher looks really, really good at the moment & with the weather like it is the views of college park are super.

I note the generally approving tone of the comments on this thread about the Ussher library. It is certainly a very nice building to look at from the outside and there is a great view across the cricket pitch from inside.

But…

I’ve been doing some work in that library for the past few days and I find it a dreadful place in which to work. This is because of the atrium, which has generally received a lot of praise. The problem is this. The books are all on one side of the atrium, while the desks are on the other side. To get from one side to the other, on each floor, you have to walk across this “gangway” (I’m not an architect) which is pretty wide, maybe 3 metres wide. However, you cannot help noticing on one side the enormous drop down to the bottom of the building. And I’m only working on Level 1, which is (I think) actually the fourth level from the bottom. (the type of “gangway” I’m talking about is shown pretty clearly on a couple of the interior photos linked earlier in the thread)

You are of course protected from falling into this chasm by some perspex (probably about a metre high) but even having to look at it still scares me to death every time I walk down this “gangway”. I don’t have a great head for heights, but I can still go to places like Dun Aengus and appreciate its magnificence, as long as I don’t go right up to the edge. And I used to work on the eighth floor of a building over in London.

Now I don’t expect that we’d ever move much beyond the bungalow office block if we had to constantly try to accomodate the needs of people who don’t have a great head for heights. But the problem with this building is that, either going between the door (on each level) and the desks, or between the books and the desks, (i.e. doing pretty well any of the things that require movement in a library) you can’t avoid seeing this canyon right beside you.

Just perhaps something that you architects might bear in mind.