Qualla: Library of Birmingham https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Library of Birmingham https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham Library of Birmingham: Introduction https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Alex Liivet from Chester, United Kingdom, CC0. A sixteen-year-old girl stood at the entrance on 3 September 2013 and told the crowd that one book, one pen, one teacher could change the world. Malala Yousafzai had every reason to know. The Taliban had shot her in the head at close range for the crime of going to school, and she now lived a short drive from this site in Centenary Square. The £188.8 million building she opened that morning would become the largest public cultural space in Europe, the largest regional library on the continent, and within a year, the tenth most popular visitor attraction in the United Kingdom. Birmingham had built it as a statement about what cities owe their citizens.

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Image: Alex Liivet from Chester, United Kingdom | CC0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Library of Birmingham: A Building Sheathed in Light https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Steve Fareham, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Dutch firm Mecanoo won the international design competition in August 2008, beating Foster and Partners, OMA, and five other practices selected from more than a hundred entrants. The result is impossible to mistake for any other library. A facade of interlocking aluminium rin...

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Image: Steve Fareham | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-a-building-sheathed-in-light.mp3 0:06 2 full Library of Birmingham: The Shakespeare Room That Travelled https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Bs0u10e01, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the seventh floor, behind glass, sits a small wood-panelled room from 1882. John Henry Chamberlain designed the Shakespeare Memorial Room for Birmingham's first Central Library, all carved oak and Renaissance Revival detail. When that building came down in 1974, the room was d...

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Image: Bs0u10e01 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-the-shakespeare-room-that-travelled.mp3 0:06 3 full Library of Birmingham: The Reckoning That Followed https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Gordon Griffiths, CC BY-SA 2.0. Within sixteen months of opening, Birmingham City Council announced it could no longer afford to run the library it had just built. Opening hours were cut from 73 a week to 40. Roughly half the 188-person staff lost their jobs. Visitor numbers dropped to 1.8 million in 2015, stil...

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Image: Gordon Griffiths | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-the-reckoning-that-followed.mp3 0:06 4 full Library of Birmingham: Cold Water and Quiet Engineering https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0. Underneath the building, a more modest miracle. Cold groundwater is pumped up from the aquifer beneath Centenary Square, run through the air-conditioning system, then returned to the earth through a second well. No refrigerants. No towers belching steam. The library cools itself ...

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Image: Philip Halling | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-cold-water-and-quiet-engineering.mp3 0:06 5 full Library of Birmingham: What Centenary Square Holds Now https://qualla.com/library-of-birmingham/ Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. The library shares Centenary Square with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, which it physically connects to and partly shares facilities with, and with Baskerville House, named for the eighteenth-century printer whose typefaces still appear on book covers everywhere. Stand in the ...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/d/library-of-birmingham-wp/gcqd-library-of-birmingham-what-centenary-square-holds-now.mp3 0:06 6 full