The accumulation of historic and contemporary architecture within Shrewsbury has crafted unique spatial patterns throughout the town’s landscape. Concentrations of man-made structures founding the basis of tight, pressure spaces and vast areas of flora allowing for open, release spaces. The continual shifting from pressure to release environments builds a spatially dynamic user experience. The concept of pressure and release, found within the ‘empty’ spaces of Shrewsbury, is the driver of form and spatial composition within the new library complex.
“Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or a symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep.” (Zumthor, 1998)
