Munster city library. Ediz. illustrata: Munster 1987-93, Architekturburo Bolles-Wilson (Architecture in Detail) - Tapa blanda

Part of a series of technically informative monographs embracing a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, this work deals with Munster City Library, and includes a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details. Peter Wilson's new Munster library is a complex and intricate building. It collects a variety of separate spatial conditions, each of which is conceived as an event in itself (for example, the newspaper reading salon is focused on a welcoming fireplace) and synthesises them into a complex and evocative whole. It responds equally sympathetically to its city-centre sites, dividing into two wings above ground level to create and contain a new urban space. Wilson's building is thus both an intimate place of information, of quiet and education as well as a new formal focus for the city of Munster as a whole. Peter Wilson is a graduate of the Architectural Association, London, and one of a small group of young architects who have made their name by living and building abroad. Based in Germany, his Munster City Library is the largest of his built-works to date. The new building was commissioned to replace an existing but outgrown institution and simultaneously to commemorate the city's 1200th anniversary in 1993 and its gradual rebirth after wartime devastation.

Francisco Sanin teaches at Princeton University School of Architecture.