Culture pavilion.

As a representative national institution, this new building for the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt represents a modest, functional, democratic ideal.

Preserving culture is costly, time and space consuming. The concerns of culture are universal but artefacts remain classified along nationalistic lines and how a nation houses its culture is as revealing as a study of its stored treasures. The Deutsche Bibliothek, as an institution, is as split as German history. It is spread over three cities: the Musik Archiv in Berlin and libraries in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main. Between 1945 and 1989 Leipzig and Frankfurt, apart from collecting every publication in their own sectors, also collected those of the enemy. In Frankfurt a two stage architectural competition, held between 1981 and 1984, and eventually won by Mete Arat, Hans-Dieter and Gisela Kaiser in opposition to an initially preferred design by GUnter Behnisch, was already in detailed planning when Germany's unification treaty was signed. Both Frankfurt and Leipzig have publishing traditions and both still hold annual international book fairs. Perhaps the idea that the east should not be totally ransacked led to the decision to maintain two depositories with identical contents. Every book and magazine published in the German language, including those from Switzerland and Austria, can be found in Frankfurt, along with a special collection of German writings in exile. The Frankfurt library is designed to hold up to 18 million publications, and meet needs up to 2040.

Situated on the corner of a busy crossroad on the Eckenheimer Landstrasse, the library entrance of glass doors is approached across a black basalt flagged court. The shallow glass-domed double-storey foyer - one of the few architectural references to a Classically designed public building - is the centre point from which the two wings of the library stretch along the public perimeters of the site. Between these splayed wings a landscaped garden can be seen but not entered. The two parallel blocks which form the east wing contain 5000 square metres of up to five floors of offices bordering the street over workshops for printing and binding. Hidden from public view between the two blocks there is a delivery yard and access to the public underground car park. New publications arrive daily by post. Vast quantities of cardboard packaging are compressed in special rubbish collection rooms for pick up and recycling. The east wing could be classified as behind the scenes. In these offices most of the 394 employees work; in the EDV suite with its data strong room, transferring the written word from paper to electronic media, cataloguing and administrating. With the idea of counteracting the health problems of sedentary work, a small keep-fit room has also been tucked in-between the offices. At the end of this wing two caretakers' flats in a Modernist white concrete pavilion enjoy optimum privacy with use of the lawns.

In contrast the west wing is the public face of the library containing 3200 square metres of double-height reading room with 292 seats on the main floor and along galleries, overlooking the internal garden. A separately articulated restaurant with 160 place settings facing the street and entrance is directly accessible from the domed foyer, as is also a double-height exhibition hall, connected at gallery level with a 300 seat auditorium, equipped with simultaneous translation cabins and projection facilities. This constellation of function rooms gives maximum flexibility for events combining lectures, presentations and catering from the public restaurant.

Buried beneath virtually the whole of the 19 000 square metre site are three storage levels, parking for 271 cars and a nuclear fallout shelter for employees. After studying various book storage and transport systems, the underground climate was fixed at 18 degrees Celsius with 50 per cent humidity for both paper and personnel comfort. Electric rechargeable battery cars driven by staff run between the stacks, picking up and returning publications requested over computer codes from the library staff above. A paternoster style vertical and horizontal conveyor belt system transports the publications from arrival in the post room, to the stores and all floors above. Storage areas are compartmentalized to hinder fire spread, and covered by a dry sprinkler system which only fills with water when activated by smoke detectors, to try and avoid water damage caused by broken pipes. All three underground floors lie below ground water level. To provide enough ballast in the foundations so that the building did not float out of the earth, the base concrete slab was constructed as a sandwich with iron pellets infill. As a second line of defence against ground water infiltration, the ventilation ducts are full-height corridors around the perimeter of the cellar, forming a safety buffer zone and making inspection