Newly formed architecture practice Kinetic AIU (Architecture, Innovation and Urbanism) has designed a training suite at Birmingham Central Library, the Seventies' brutalist icon which is earmarked for demolition. The library, famously condemned by Prince Charles as a 'place for incinerating books, rather than a place for reading', is to be replaced by a new building by Richard Rogers Partnership, in Eastside. The small project for an IT training suite, which is in one corner of the monolithic building, was an opportunity for Kinetic designers Rob Martin and Bob Ghosh to argue that the library should be saved. 'We believe that it is time to re-evaluate the existing building. It still has fantastic character and with the new scheme now stumbling under the weight of spiralling costs and political division within the city, there is a sense that the existing building may not be without a future'.

The IT suite provides a space for basic, informal training for students from the city's Matthew Boulton College. Kinetic has stripped away layers of redundant services and ad hoc additions and used the row concrete of the building with data infrastructure housed beneath a raised platform, rather than under the usual suspended floor. Deliberately "uncorporate", the design includes an orange rubber spine which hides the main data infrastructure while acting as an organisational device which connects clusters of work terminals.

According to Ghosh, 'The scheme demonstrates that it is possible to make sense of the existing structure in terms of 21st-century communications and technology, while creating a "piece of theatre" in an otherwise tired environment, perhaps an indication of how the rest of the building could be addressed.'