The Word

‘The Word’, a new Library and Digital Media Centre at the heart of South Shields town centre redevelopment. The building boasted of an outstanding illusion of concrete, incorporating a feature soffit with patterned cut ply, recessed bands and a central atrium with cast coffers.

The four-storey building was the first part, and focal point of the £100m South Shields development scheme to transform the town centre over the coming years for both residents and tourists. As well as a library, the facility also featured an IT suite, exhibition space, a café rooftop restaurant and terrace.

The concept, developed by Faulkner Browns Architects, took a simple circulated form and inserted two Lens Platforms to provide superb views of the River Tyne. The architectural idea for the façade is likened to fanning out the pages in a book with the entrance resembling the bookend, with two vertical spine walls. The concept allowed the benefit of fantastic views both into and out from the building at key locations.

Each floor wrapped around the perimeter of the façade with a 15 metre diameter atrium, located in the centre, with triple height voids cutting through at the entrance and the Lens Platforms.

The building incorporated a reinforced concrete slab solution with exposed soffits around a central atrium area. The structure stood proud, with a type 2 high-quality exposed concrete finish, beautifully presenting the in-situ concrete frame, columns and soffits spread over four floors. Cylindrical columns running throughout the build were constructed with single use spiral cardboard tubes, producing an immaculate face to the columns. The columns were internally lined with a smooth face plastic release sheet; and a special pour method was adopted to achieve the best result with each column.