The Reading Room: Bricks and Books for a Storytellers’ Paradise

Architect Anavadya brings alive enterpreneur Archana Gopinath’s  vision of a library, a house of books and community space in Kerala, called The Reading Room. By Sajini Sahadevan

Five-year-old Prayag walks into The Reading Room (TRR), holding his mother’s hand, hops down a short flight of stairs, pulls out a book from a shelf, plops himself onto a rug and gets busy with his crayons.

Anavadya watches on, smiling, as the space she designed in a quiet neighbourhood in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, serves its purpose exactly as she’d intended, every day.

Part library — part community space, the architect says despite its dual function which could be confusing in a brief, the client’s clarity made all the difference. Archana Gopinath, founder, TRR, knew what she wanted in terms of function and ambience, leaving the rest to Anavadya’s gumption. A 2000 sqft, two-storeyed building within five cents, “warm” and “cozy” are the words most used by first-time visitors to describe TRR since its opening in the new location four years back.

Archana’s brief, a space made of “bricks” and “books”, already made it welcoming, together with a public space that would serve as the library and heart of the building where she could hold her storytelling sessions for children.

“She said it would be nice to allow glimpses of the rows of books through the windows, like one would see into a house when passing by,” Anavadya recalls. The first floor has a semi-private space for studying/co-working and a room for events. One wing on the same floor also has a bedroom and attached bathroom for Archana to catch a breather on the days when TRR has back-to-back events.

A Book House

A bookworm’s haven, the wall-to-floor shelves can evoke a gasp of delight. An interplay of bricks and shelves form the walls, a platform along the base serving as an end-to-end seat with cupboards for storage underneath. The bottom rows of the shelves are lined with books from children’s literature.

The seating platform allows children to sit or stand on it to pick out books that appeal to them. The rugs and round chair cushions, though seemingly casually strewn about, adding pops of colour to the cement floor, were also intentionally placed.

“The idea was that the space should primarily feel welcoming to children. But now even the adult members tend to pick books and settle on the floor. The events space upstairs is only used in case of a screening or if the main area is occupied. Otherwise, everyone prefers to sit here.”

Earthy tones and minimal furnishing set the mood with little in terms of distraction or overwhelm. The corridors and stairways and cement floor painted grey, provide the muted background that bridges the spaces in a seamless yet functional manner — from the entrance to the library to the first floor with even the steel stairway in the same colour, mesh panels acting as a screen to provide enough visibility to ensure separation of the spaces.

The floor-length windows with bottle green frames offset the ambience created by the brick walls and book-lined shelves.

The brick jaali against the grey facade that gives TRR its distinct identity streams light into the events room on the first floor. Skylights with steel frames bring in ample sunshine and let climbers thrive.

Archana, an animal lover, asked for a pet-friendly zone adjacent to her office room at the corner of the ground floor. A flap door for the neighbourhood stray cat opens from her office window to a verandah that hugs the building and compound wall, leading to a gate on the side, parallel yet away from the main entrance.

The front of the square plot has been left open to function as parking slots and help to manoeuvre vehicles through the narrow lane with ease.

 Over the nine years since TRR was first introduced in the city as a unique concept, it has come to evolve as a community hub that now hosts spoken word sessions, a monthly book club, fortnightly debate club, film discussions for cinephiles and vacation months that are packed with children’s activities, apart from the regular storytelling sessions for different age groups that focus on developing critical thinking and language skills among children.

Home to more than 8,000 books, TRR continues to grow into a place where mobile screens are an afterthought for no more than a parting selfie, before the next debate, spoken word or storytelling session.