Bridging the "Two Cultures": The Architecture of the New British Library

Opened in 1997, the new British Library at St. Pancras, London was designed as a building of two main volumes, one devoted to the arts and humanities, the other to science, technology and business. This dichotomy echoed the debate set in motion in 1959 by the publication of C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. The project asked in which ways this debate fed through into Colin St. John Wilson's iconic design for the new British Library, the plan for which was more than a generation in the making.