A seagull was pacing disconcertedly outside Culture House on Wednesday morning.
“Flip me,” it seemed to be thinking. “How do you get into this place?”
I was thinking along similar lines. A few days ahead of the official opening, the doors were shut tight as a clam and resistant to all forms of two-legged approach.
Well, you never know with automatic doors.
In my experience, some fly open at the hint of a distant footstep while others require near nose-to-glass contact. One pair I know favours the latter but then opens outwards, requiring sudden evasive action.
Being excluded gave me and the seagull (possibly) time to consider first impressions of this £27 million addition to Sunderland’s ‘cultural quarter’, which has seen the Keel Square area dramatically transformed.
Against the nearby Empire theatre and the Peacock and Dun Cow pubs, flamboyant reminders of a bygone age, this modern FaulknerBrowns creation is large, boxy and angular, with expanses of pale brick.
Transparent walls of glass (I’m thinking Newcastle City Library and National Glass Centre) have perhaps had their day.
The purpose of Culture House, with its subtle signage, is rather opaque although that might change when it opens to a curious public and new restaurant Blacks Corner shines a welcoming light.
Via a phone call and a discreet buzzer, I left the seagull pacing and gained entry – there to meet Leanne Littlewood, appointed as Culture House director early in 2023 before spades broke ground.
Her smile of greeting couldn’t disguise the fact that here was a woman with a million things to do.
“One of the technicians said I’m naggier than his wife at present,” she confided cheerfully.
The delayed project had attracted criticism, she acknowledged, and some of it fairly robust.
But it’s always the way. Private Eye’s architecture critic once described Gateshead’s new international centre for music as like a giant slug while one of the more jocular opponents of The Angel of the North suggested it be painted lime green.
FaulknerBrowns describe Culture House as “a modern library, envisaged to provide a welcoming, inspiring space for the people of Sunderland to read, write and create”.
Leanne said: “You don’t judge a book by its cover so I’d like people to reserve judgement until they see what’s inside.”
It was always intended to be something different, she added. “There are curiosities all over the building.”
I was about to find out that she wasn’t wrong.
If it were a book, I’m inclined to think Culture House could be a bestseller - not there’s any charge for admission.
Once inside, the space opens into a giant atrium with seating arranged round a corkscrew staircase and with surrounding screens displaying digital artworks.
There were three, said Leanne, each with a different theme: glass, water and trees. All were the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, a London-based but internationally known art collective.
Further exploration would reveal technology all over the building but this first sight is spectacular.
Two exhibition spaces also reside on the ground floor: the Focus Gallery and the Vision Gallery.
The inaugural attraction in the latter is Geist, a shimmering sculpture by artists Harriet Lumby and Alan Hayes who collaborate as This Is Loop.
An information board asks: “Do you know that billions of tiny particles are passing through your body right now?”
That’s quite a thing to consider if you’ve just popped in to change your library books. But already you’ll be getting the sense that this is no ordinary library.
Those ‘ghost particles’, I now know, are neutrinos, mysterious building blocks of the universe, and the artists illustrate their existence with this artwork displayed like a flashy caged beast.
To demonstrate its interactive qualities, Leanne approached and it went blue. Others, she said, might trigger a different response.
Leanne led me up to the first of the three upper floors, all arranged round that epic central atrium.
We walked along broad corridors decorated with interesting displays and providing access to a variety of rooms and spaces.
First floor attractions, Leanne said, were geared towards young people and families having fun.
Here you’ll find The Den, a spacious area for reading and play. It’s wonderfully welcoming with its floor-based games, dressing up clothes and array of places to sit or sprawl.
Best of all, if you fear for the future of books as technology powers on, is the enormous variety of them here, all seductively displayed.
Leanne is a book fan and it’s evident throughout the building that they’re regarded as the equals of all the whizzy gizmos.
“Really everything here is about trying to make connections with people,” she said.
“It was important we consulted widely so we talked to people who said they didn’t use libraries. What was stopping them?
“Can’t see the wood for the trees, some of them said. So we’ve used shelves not for storage but for display (in The Den and elsewhere, they’re arranged with front cover rather than spine to the fore).
“It’s better to have 20,000 books used regularly than 200,000 that aren’t.”
Alongside the children’s books is a play area which promises FUN (my capitals). It resembles the set of a pre-schoolers’ TV show. There’s even a colourful table top game with balls and pegs and holes but absolutely no rules, imagination being key.
Culture House designers invited young people to engage with the planning process through the Minecraft video game. Whether that explains the look of the place, I don’t know.
But what the respondents wanted (of course) was access to computers so in the engagement studio, Domain, there are plenty of them, all equipped with Adobe creative packages.
Workshops will be run here, potentially generating digital creations that can be shown on the Culture House big screens. “This is about people being creative,” said Leanne. If you want a form filled in, head elsewhere.
The Exchange is the place for films or talks. It’s to be the base of the Sunderland Shorts Film Festival, which, incidentally, has one of the six micro-exhibition spaces located across the building.
Others have been taken up by North East Screen, Seven Stories, Music Connects Sunderland, the Empire Theatre and Kielder Observatory.
Prominence is also given to the creations emanating from community workshops initiated by The Cultural Spring.
I was shown the green screen room, an important introduction to the film-making business, and the splendid Immersion Gallery whose walls can be transformed by digital artworks, as in the atrium.
Leanne envisaged pilates and wellbeing sessions here and said Theatre Space North East are to present their panto here with digital backdrops.
On the second floor the Audrey Amiss exhibition was being assembled behind the glass walls of the new Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and I saw meeting rooms and one of the two highly professional looking podcasting studios.
Leanne explained podcasting in a way I hadn’t heard before.
“More and more young people sit in their bedrooms and ‘talk’ to people on the internet but there’s nobody actually in front of them.
“This is a step towards having a dialogue. It’s so important that young people learn how to discuss things and perhaps to disagree.
“We hope that with a microphone in front of them and given a bit of space, the world will come alive for them. I really hope they’ll have a go and feel empowered.”
On the third floor I’m shown The Sky Garden, an attractive space open to the elements which an Indian summer will show to best advantage, and The Record which is the place for local studies.
“We’ve digitised 50,000 documents over the last couple of years,” said Leanne.
In the Inventors Lab I met the inspirational Dominic Willcox who has built on the success of his Little Inventors initiative to introduce Joy Lab, a widening of his mission to promote “inventing for happiness”.
He demonstrated a nifty device for preventing a cat wrecking your wallpaper invented by 56-year-old Pauline, from Hebburn (turned into reality by model-maker Chloe Rodham).
Among other amusing inventions on show were a teacher survival belt, a hug chair with big arms and a machine for dispensing stickers inspiring positive thoughts.
More than 1,000 local people rose to the challenge of inventing something that could bring a moment’s happiness to someone’s day. These were the winners, brought into being by professional makers.
In a large room, meanwhile, a group of people who appeared to have taken inspiration from Joy Lab could be seen laughing and gesticulating around a conference table.
Leanne poked her head in to say she was glad they were having fun. Under discussion, she told me afterwards, was this autumn’s Northern Children’s Book Festival. Should be a hoot!
Leanne said there had been various test events with people invited in to use different parts of the building.
The reaction had always been wow!
A Middlesbrough lass, she landed the Culture House job (which brings with it the role of head of cultural services) after 17 years in culture-related roles in her home town.
She said she had been won over by Sunderland’s ambition in putting culture at the heart of regeneration and creating Keel Square. “I don’t think anybody has been doing it in quite the same way so it seemed an opportunity.”
Clearly she has had no regrets so far.
“The shine of this place never comes off for me,” she said.
“I tend to see it through the eyes of everyone who’s seeing it for the first time because I’m reminded of how flipping brilliant it is.”
I’m guessing that might be the reaction of many more people when Culture House opens at long last on Saturday (September 12).