DRDH uses red brickwork to bring "civic character" to London library and housing block

UK architecture studio DRDH has completed Sidcup Storyteller, a public library, cinema and housing block in southeast London that is wrapped in red brickwork.

Designed for the London Borough of Bexley, Sidcup Storyteller was commissioned via the London Mayor's Architectural Framework as part of the ongoing development of Sidcup's high street.

The project is DRDH's first public project in the capital, and the studio looked to create a "civic, public character" for the mixed-use centre, referencing the existing buildings on the high street.

"The form of the building offers it as an urban figure with a civic, public character. Its nuanced geometry is defined by its situation," explained the studio. "It completes one edge of an urban block, in a reduced brick classicism familiar to the suburban high streets of London's outer suburbs."

The brief required the varied programme of Sidcup Storyteller to be accommodated on a challenging site, measuring 68 metres in length but just 11 metres at its widest point.

On the ground floor are a series of double-height spaces, including a cafe that creates a new street frontage and the library deeper in the plan, both of which are framed by an exposed concrete structure set against areas of pale timber panelling.

A staircase at the front of the building is expressed visually as a curved brick form, and leads up to an additional seating area and a co-working mezzanine overlooking the library and three cinema screens above.

At the back of the site, a separate residential entrance leads to nine apartments spread across the building's three floors, each of which overlooks the road from a balcony sheltered by a deep cut-out in the facade.

The concrete frame used to construct the lower levels of Sidcup Storyteller created a "table", atop which the acoustically-isolated cinema screens have been housed within a steel frame, minimising weight and avoiding the need for pile foundations.

For the exterior, handmade Belgian bricks laid both horizontally and vertically were combined with concrete lintels with a reddish brown pigment, chosen to reference the different shades of the surrounding redbrick buildings.

"The expedient heterogeneity of the construction is expressed obliquely through the external facade, which is made of a slender, handmade Belgian brick," explained the studio.

"In colour and material it responds to the three, very different red brick buildings on the opposing corners of the crossroads."

"However, the method of its laying, with flush joints and bagged mortar, offers it the sense of a fabric or skin, wrapped around the strong geometrical form," it added.

DRDH Architects was founded by Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth in 2000.

Previous projects by the studio include an apartment complex and social centre for elderly people in Belgium, designed alongside Architecten de Vylder Vinck Tallieu, and a concrete cultural centre in Norway.

The phorography is by David Grandorge.

Project credits:

DRDH project team: David Eagleton, Hannah Harmans, David Howarth, Jillian Jones, Shelly-Ann O'Dea, Daniel Rosbottom, Ewan Stone, Paolo Scianna: project architect,
Structural engineer: Engineers EHRW
Services engineer: Harley Haddow
Quantity surveyor: Playle and Partners
Acoustics: Charcoal Blue
Cinema consultant (competition): Consult Project Management
Contractor: Neilcott Construction Limited

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