Dominique Perrault has made his own path in contemporary architecture, gaining in notoriety over the years both in and outside of his native France. Born in 1953 in Clermont-Ferrand, he studied in Paris and received his diploma as an architect from the École des Beaux-Arts in 1978. He received a further degree in Urbanism at the École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1979, as well as a Master’s in History at the EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) in 1980. He created his own firm in 1981 in Paris. Though he completed works before that date, Perrault’s career took a sudden upswing when an international jury selected him to design the French National Library in Paris in 1989. The last of President François Mitterrand’s Grands Travaux, a series of cultural projects that included the Louvre Pyramid by I.M. Pei, the Library is made up of four 79-meter high towers, imagined like open books around a sunken central courtyard. This project underlines a number of characteristics of Perrault’s other work, in particular the use of “chain mail” cladding for surfaces, replacing the more usual smooth, modern appearance. The central garden merits attention. “The modern movement always had a very Puritan relationship with the earth,” says Dominique Perrault. “When Le Corbusier imagined setting buildings up on pilotis so that they would not touch the earth, his attitude was very peculiar. In my project, the idea of the natural level of the earth disappears, and the building blends with nature. In Paris, one has the impression that the garden of the Library is at the level of the Seine, but in fact, it is ten meters lower. One almost feels that the garden was there before the building and that the Library somehow protects it. This relationship with the earth is complex, and it contradicts the usual Modernist tenets.” When pressed on this point, Perrault goes on to explain “The garden is not only beautiful, it is sacred. Visitors cannot enter it. It is the symbolic place of origin of the Library, it brings calm and light to the interior. It is in some sense the first garden." Twenty years after its inauguration in 1995, the French National Library remains one of the most significant contemporary public buildings in France.