St Mary's University Naylor Library
The Naylor Library is a newly refurbished building with over 250 extra study places to suit different working styles, alongside an on-site cafe.
Room for growth
With a planned increase in student numbers, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, realised that their existing building no longer provided adequate space for the library and IT services.
The University appointed FG Library & Learning to design a new, additional facility to provide a modern and innovative furniture layout flexible enough for future changes and practical in terms of including different types of study areas and optimising use of the space.
The building was to include collaborative work areas, individual study, one-to-one and group study rooms, computer and laptop space, comfortable study seating, café seating, customer services points, flexible teaching spaces, a technology enhanced learning suite as well as shelving.
We used Reflection shelving to create the main Education Library on the ground floor, accommodating approximately 33,000 books as well as a resources collection room holding items used as teaching aids in the classroom.
By the main entrance is a vibrant study café with a mixture of comfortable seating, laptop bars and tables. On the first floor the aim was to provide a technology-rich space for both trainee teachers and other students and staff, but the area that the students migrate to first is a large comfy seating zone which provides space to work either alone or collaboratively, with plenty of charging points built into the furniture.