Every kind of study, on one floor
A library has to serve the student who needs silence and the group finishing a project together. We plan the mix: individual study desks with power, group tables, soft seating for reading, bookable study rooms, and booths and pods for calls and quiet work.
At King’s College London’s Franklin Wilkins and IOP libraries, that mix gave students more choice of where and how to study, from silent study to group projects.
Installed while the library stays open
Libraries are busiest exactly when you would want to work in them. We install in phases over the summer and the vacations, floor by floor, and out of hours and at weekends, so study space is never lost.
At King’s, we agreed the specification, fabrics and finishes with the university’s Learning and Teaching Space Improvement Board first, then installed through the summer while both libraries kept running.
Quiet rooms, booths and pods
Group work and video calls need somewhere to go that is not the silent floor. Acoustic booths and study pods give students and staff a quiet place to talk without building new rooms.
They need no building work, and when the library changes, they can move with it.
Refresh before you replace
Many library chairs only need new fabric. Re-upholstery is timed to the vacations: seats are collected at the end of term and back in place before students return. At UCL’s Chandler House, chairs were recovered at £90 each instead of £160 for new.
We also repair on site, and audit what is worth keeping before anything is cleared.
Oxford, Cambridge and London
We furnish libraries and study spaces for universities and colleges including UCL, King’s College London, and colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, from a single floor to a whole new building such as UCL East at Marshgate.
At Pembroke College, we designed, planned and furnished a new building, installed out of hours and at weekends, to time and budget.
Buying, sustainability and aftercare
Smaller library refreshes can usually be bought directly. For larger projects, we respond to tenders and complete supplier onboarding, with social value and sustainability reporting included.
JPA holds EcoVadis Platinum, placing us in the top 1% of companies rated, and everything we supply carries a 10-year supported warranty.
