Architecture studio Bisset Adams has won a competition to design a lakeside library and community centre in southeast London, as part of a major overhaul of the brutalist Thamesmead estate.

Bisset Adams will build the Southmere Village Library to the south bank of Southmere Lake, right beside the the sprawling concrete housing estate that was made infamous by the film adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.
The building forms part of a new masterplan for the area, put forward by housing association Peabody, to create 1,500 new homes ahead of the arrival of Crossrail.

Bisset Adams was selected ahead of proposals by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, Adam Khan Architects, Keith Williams Architects and Architecture 00 in a competition run by Peabody, the London Borough of Bexley and the Royal Institute of British Architects.  Its winning proposal is for a library modelled on a swan's nest.
The library will be constructed from cross-laminated timber and is expected to cost up to £5 million to complete. The building will also include a learning space at ground level, with the potential for health and wellbeing areas on the upper floor.

"We wanted to create a design which tells a story about the lake and the environment. We also wanted it to be fun," said Bisset Adams director Iain Johnston. "The concept was inspired by the swans nesting by the lakeside."
"We used the pattern of a swan's nest as a texture for the perforated cladd...