British Museum Reading Room

The Reading Room sits at the literal center of the British Museum, occupying what was once an empty, underutilized courtyard. In the eighteen fifties, the museum faced a crisis of space as its library collection ballooned to over half a million books. Antonio Panizzi, the museum's ambitious Keeper of Printed Books, devised a bold solution to this congestion by proposing a massive, circular structure built directly into that open quadrangle. Architect Sydney Smirke took that vision and turned it into reality, completing the project in eighteen fifty-seven with a design that maximized every inch of the available space.