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Ardwick Reading Room

Location
Manchester
Year
2022
Typology
Cultural
Area
410 m²
Interior design
Wigglesworth
Photography
—
Contractor
—
01

The ceiling was the whole project

A suspended grid had been hiding a barrel vault since 1968. Taking it out gained four metres of height and lost every acoustic assumption the room had been running on — a reading room that echoes is not a reading room. The felt baffles above the shelving are doing all the work the tiles used to, and are the only genuinely new thing in the space.

The vault, uncovered
Baffles, above the stacks

Quiet is a material. It costs as much as the floor and nobody photographs it.

Felt, hung above the stacks rather than fixed to the vault. Every acoustic gain here had to be reversible — the ceiling is the listed part.
Shelving kept below the springing line
Which is why the vault still reads as one room

The vault, four metres higher than it was in 1968.

Reading tables, lit individually
No overhead light anywhere in the hall

End to end, with the grid gone.

A suspended grid had hidden this since 1968. Taking it out gained four metres and lost every acoustic assumption the room was running on.

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