ABSTRACT
Winchester is a city with a distinguished history and the site was known to have been occupied in Roman times. Relationships between the city of Winchester and the county council had been problematic for some time but matters began to change. Hampshire is a large, mainly rural, county on the south coast of England. Hampshire maintains its own in-house architectural service and under the leadership of Colin Stansfield Smith and latterly Andrew Smith, designed and built many library buildings, which for architectural excellence stand comparison with any in the world. Discovery Centres are modernized town centre libraries. The linking theme is that the Discovery Centre should work as a coherent whole: a non-threatening, non-commercial space in the city where people can come together - to read and browse, choose a book, borrow a DVD, look at an art exhibition, meet friends, study local history or research a family tree or attend an adult education class.
