If it can be said that the 1950's was a period in history when people felt nostalgia for the future - the 21st Century - then current nostalgia for the 1950's must be nostalgia for the present!

 

Perhaps that is a good way to describe these library fittings designed by Simon to accommodate current technology of the kind predicted half a century ago. Drawing on a childhood passion for the adventures of space adventurer Dan Dare and his trusted assistant Digby, as featured in Eagle comic in the 1950's, this fitout still manages to sit well within a library building designed in the 1970's in a very different aesthetic - actually derived from the earth buildings of Eltham - where brown bricks and timber predominate.

 

In a deliberate decision to retain the library's earthy origins, Simon has retained the original wood and brick finishes, and introduced a sympathetic green carpet. The red, gold, silver, chrome, purple and aubergine science fiction forms appear in the foreground, with the charcoal-coloured computers visually well-integrated.