Storyteller Library, Cinema & Housing, London Borough of Bexley, for London Borough of Bexley, with DRDH and Really Local Group

The Storyteller Library, Cinema, and Housing fully opened in Summer 2023. It consists of a three-screen independent cinema; a cafe; nine apartments; co-working space; a gallery; and a “Changing Places” sanitary facility. The £6.2m development is located on the high street of suburban Sidcup. The project is DRDH’s first public building in London.

Who is on the project team? (designer, consultants, etc)

DRDH Architects, eHRW Structural Engineer, Harley Haddow Services Engineer, Playle and Partners Cost Consultant & CDM , Charcoal Blue Acoustic Engineer, Whitecode BREEAM Assessor, Velocity Transport Consultant, Joule Group Fire Engineer, Down to Earth Arboriculture

Describe the context of this project, its neighbourhood and people?

Meaning a ’fold in the hill’, there has been a settlement at Sidcup since 1254. A hamlet on the road to London from the Southeast, it was finally swallowed by the Twentieth Century expansion of the City, with ubiquitous, pebble-dashed, semi-D’s, interspersed by ancient trees, lapping against the ancient line of its High Street. These new suburbs presented themselves as aspirational places, proposing new ways of living to their rapidly expanding populations, escaping the inner city. The quietly exuberant ‘suburban civic’ of public facilities such as libraries and cinemas, built during that period, played a significant part in communicating this. Now part of the London Borough of Bexley, Sidcup is home to two notable performing arts colleges, and a typically diverse population, in terms of age, gender and ethnicity. Nonetheless its once lively High Street has suffered a common malaise and in 2014, with its department store closed and art-deco cinema demolished, the Borough applied for funding to regenerate it. Sidcup Storyteller is the centrepiece of this project, a hybrid public building with a mixed programme that seeks to appeal to, and welcome, a broad cross section of the community; it’s open, yet purposefully civic character echoing the confident image of its forebears. Redefining the empty corner of an important crossroads, it profits from its attenuated site. A carefully calibrated form and close-fitting, red brick jacket consolidate the streetscape, drawing its heterogenous neighbours into dialogue with one another, while its large windows engage its public interiors directly with the street. 

What makes this place thrive? How does the community come together? What makes this a great place to live, work, play, visit or learn?

Sidcup has many assets. An education hub for the South East of London, it is home to three FE colleges, including Bird College and the Rose Bruford performing arts colleges, with the young population they attract balancing it’s a wider ageing population. In its hybrid offer, Sidcup Storyteller addresses this breadth, co-locating local services including a ‘changing places’ sanitary facility, an independent cinema, café and nine apartments for sale. It is a catalyst for the high street as a whole, making it accessible to those otherwise housebound and bringing footfall that has encouraged new businesses into previously empty units. From a welcoming corner entrance, its mix of spaces and functions attracts a broad audience that can use it in different ways throughout the day, from studying in the morning over a croissant, to spending an evening munching pop-corn in the intimacy of a small cinema. The spaces and movement through the building take pleasure in these overlaps. Each function is located off a common, timber lined entrance hall and stair, of almost domestic character; the first of a series of anterooms which articulate a sequence of bright, double-height spaces housing the café, library and children’s library, each filled with natural light and open to the street through large windows. Quieter spaces above overlook these public rooms and the world outside, enlivening a journey to the top floor where a community room for rent sits adjacent to three cinema screens, one of which can double as a small performance stage. 

How has this place adapted, and how does it continue to adapt, to changing demographics, behaviors, market context, policy, transport habits and the climate crisis? What makes it resilient?

In its very conception, the project elaborates upon traditional notions of how a public building comes into being and what it might offer. Co-locating public and commercial facilities, alongside the capital receipt of apartments for sale and the redevelopment of the previous library site for needed housing, the project has allowed a Conservative led Borough to invest in new public, community facilities, in a period when others are closing. Its mix of functions makes the building resilient, diversifying its audience and offering an income stream that can support its future operational funding. A public good, it is also good for business, helping to counter the empty units and boarded shopfronts that blight Britain’s high streets and fracture its communities, while generating much need business rates. Resisting tendencies towards multiple, franchised identities, its different uses are subsumed into a coherent atmosphere and material character. Each engages the other, with shared spaces and facilities fostered through an architecture that actively intertwines experience. Only recently opened, users are still getting to know the building, but the ambition is to find synergies between its various functions, with film screenings being aligned to book readings for example, creating a coherent offer that activates it from early morning until late evening. Its external form expresses confidence and a civic pride that feels situated and of its place. Storyteller tells a story of hope for London’s outer boroughs, offering renewed aspiration at a time when they are, once again, under pressure to solve the Capital’s housing crisis.