As a keen buyer and (sometimes) reader of books, I couldn't resist wandering over to Birmingham to visit its new library, which seems to have bankrupted the library services budget and has never been open or staffed fully because its construction soaked up all the money. The now demolished old one was a monumental piece of brutalism which had its fans and detractors, but rotted away as the concrete aged.
The new one is much more influenced by postmodernism, at least on the outside - festooned with cheery plastic and eye-catching detail, structured to disguise the basic boxy shape. It's huge, and striking, but the plastic bits stuck over it are starting to seem less 'accessible' and more 'disposable'.
Inside, once you get past the huge atrium and inevitable retail space, it's beautiful and highly usable as an actual library. I just wish it were open more often (pandemic notwithstanding). Perhaps the weirdest bit is the Edwardian Shakespeare room found at the top of the building – transported wholesale from the old library and the one before that, beautiful in itself but clearly unwanted by the modernists and postmodernists, yet foisted on them by the demands of heritage and a public that hasn't been trained to fully embrace contemporary architecture.
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