THE Dulwich Despatch Summer 2023
Check it Out! The New Library Takes Shape By November 2023 the multi-million-pound Lower School library project should be ready to
welcome next year’s Year 7 and 8 students. Sebastian Hoo (Y7) has checked out the library’s green credentials and found out from Mr Hudson, the Director of Estates, exactly how impressive the new building will be.
The library will be completely carbon neutral and has no source of gas for the building, being primarily heated by air source heat pumps, which extract the heat from the air around the building. There will be solar panels, but they won ’ t be very useful given the library ’ s geographical location, and its surface area. The cement and concrete are all either recycled or low carbon. All of the carbon produced in this building is offset. The build will have an official opening by Dr Spence. There will be a lift and two staircases, one of them spiral. Like the current portacabins, the library and IT suite will have two floors. Both staircases will be inside, meaning that you will never get wet going between floors
again. There will be capacity for over 10,000 books in the library, meaning that there will be plenty of space for the 260 students who use it. Mr Hudson says that it is one of the biggest projects he has worked on. The first piece of the building which was erected was the lift shaft, as it is a strong point in the building. The main stairs were prebuilt before they were transported on site, as they would be hard to make in the crowded building site. By November 2023, we will be able to look back at the months of planning, building, and designing, all in one time lapse recorded by a helpful little camera in the site office. There has been a tremendous amount of planning put into this project. There has been a discussion about any extra objects in the library excluding books, some ideas being a Grand Piano like the Wodehouse library and a library pet. There may be a new name for this library, which will be released on the official opening.
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