Hollin Lane Library

The old branch library on Hollin Lane was a single gritstone room with its back to the Rochdale Canal. The brief asked for twice the space on the same footprint. The answer was to keep the stone room as the entrance and children's library, and to add a timber reading room that steps out over the water.

The new room is framed in oak and lined in oak, with a long window at the height of a seated reader. From the towpath it reads as a lantern; from inside, the canal fills the window. The cantilever is carried on two steel beams hidden in the floor, so nothing touches the water.