Bibliothèque nationale de France

Announced on 14 July 1988 and won by the French practice in an international competition, the national library is meant to hold everything published in the country. It opened to the public in 1996.

Four L-shaped glass towers stand at the corners of a vast timber esplanade, like four open books facing one another. They hold the collections, protected behind the glass by movable timber shutters, while the reading rooms sit lower down, wrapped around a sunken garden.

At the heart of the complex, that garden is a forest of tall trees cut into the ground, closed to the public and seen from the reading rooms that line it. The esplanade, raised above the street and reached by broad steps, becomes a large public platform over the river.

Metal mesh, a material that would become a signature of the practice, lines many of the interiors. The building received the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award, in 1997.