Sitting pretty in the Library

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Are all those books weighing you down? Pause to rest a while on the Library's new wooden and copper 'sculpture seats'. The pieces are the work of Brighton artists Cath Arlidge and Marcus Laffan, who came up with the winning scheme in a competition to submit ideas for special seating in the ground-floor concourse.

Librarian Adrian Peasgood worked with Liz Beth, Senior Planning Officer at Brighton & Hove Council, on the commission. The Council had granted planning permission for the Library extension (completed in autumn 1998) on condition that some funds were used to commission a work of art for display in a public part of the extended building.

Marcus, aged 34, is a furniture designer and maker, working particularly with hard woods. He said, "The concept of the design addresses knowledge and life. The mathematical perfection of the golden rectangle in our design sub-divides into an ever-diminishing pattern, thus forming points creating a spiral. Two spirals combine to form the image of a 19th-century kissing seat. They also echo the curves and arches of the surrounding architecture."

The competition brief specified the use of white oak, which is present throughout the University Library. The oak rectangular base of each seat is inlaid with contrasting rosewood, to delineate the lines of the rectangles, and copper, which carries on the line of the spiral.

Cath, 31, is a designer working with metal, and specialising in copper smithing and colouring. She said, "The solid verdigris copper in the sculpture seats echoes the use of copper on the listed Basil Spence buildings around the University's Fulton Court, and on the Library extension itself."