This new Library Building is on a sensitive site in a Conservation Area between commercial and institutional Swiss Cottage and the private houses and gardens of Belsize Park. A formal five storey façade to the front is sympathetic in scale and form to the adjacent Victorian villas, while the irregular-shaped copper clad structure to the rear is low-lying and relates in an organic way to the adjacent gardens. The library on the main floor comprises conventional book-lined reading rooms to the front with a variety of top-lit study spaces to the rear. These spaces, below the tree-like concrete and steel columns and enclosed in the canted leaves of the back walls, are akin to reading in the garden. “The project shows ... that it is possible to combine sensitivity and due deference to historic surroundings with confident expression of individuality and a modern identity.” ‘Building in Context’, CABE / English Heritage publication