The Reading Room

The Reading Room was designed and built by Interior Architecture and Design students at the University for the Creative Arts, led by Emil Eve Architects as design tutors. The project was inspired by Margate’s Georgian reading rooms - popular visitor destinations during the town’s heyday in the late 18th Century. Based on this historical precedent, students were asked to collaboratively design a contemporary Reading Room as a platform for discussion about current issues affecting Margate.

The students created a enclosure composed of a continuous bench supporting pivoting modules that could be configured to accommodate different events. They designed individual modules to facilitate a number of activities: sharing and archiving memories; writing and sending postcards; playing games; reading and studying; all aimed to generate debate around regeneration initiatives in the town.

The Reading Room was installed at the old Pettman’s Depository in Margate in 2013 and hosted a week-long series of events and talks. Following this, it travelled to Folkestone where it was was housed at the Triennial Visitor Centre acting as a place for public forums as well as an information point for festival visitors.