Staatsbibliothek Potsdamer Straße (Scharoun Building)

Part of the same architectural vision as the neighbouring Philharmonie concert hall, the Staatsbibliothek's Potsdamer Straße building was designed by Hans Scharoun and built between 1967 and 1978, its golden ochre-toned exterior and irregular, faceted massing making it one of the more distinctive — and to some, more divisive — pieces of the Kulturforum ensemble.

Inside, Scharoun rejected the conventional rectangular reading room entirely: the interior is organised as a series of polygonal, trapezoidal spaces connected by staircases, terraced and stepped rather than laid out on flat, uniform floors, with light pyramids and milky glass domes bringing indirect natural daylight down into the reading areas below — an approach to library interior design genuinely unlike almost anything else in Europe.