Simon Pepper

Simon Pepper recently retired as Professor of Architecture at the University of Liverpool. An architect with a PhD in Art History ( Essex University ), he has long-term research interests in the development of social housing and of public library buildings – both examples of architecture in the service of the community.

Books, Buildings and Social Engineering: the Design of Early Public Library Buildings in Britain from Past to Present
This session reports on an AHRC project which has produced a database of over one thousand pre-1939 public library buildings as well as a research monograph that represents the first extensive architectural history of the British public library and addresses current attitudes to those library buildings that remain intact.