The British Library’s new Business and Intellectual Property Centre opened to the public on 9 March 2006. The new Centre constructed within one of the existing reading rooms provides a new and unique resource for small and medium-sized businesses, a space for entrepreneurs and creative people to network and benefit from the British Library’s collections and specialist advisers. The British Library’s strategy is to make the building and its collections more easily accessible to the public. The design of the new Business and Intellectual Property Centre by architects Eldridge London is the first completed architectural project within the building since it opened in 1997. The design acknowledges a new generation of inventors and entrepreneurs who will respond to the new spirit of the Centre and will be drawn to a contemporary environment with the brand values and unique knowledge resource of the British Library. Behind the original oak doors of the Reading Room the new Network Area and Workshop Studios contrast in materials but not in quality with the existing building. Glass and colour are striking features of Eldridge London’s design. The Network Area is the first of a sequence of spaces and is a transitional area for networking and informal meetings between the public foyer and the Reading Room. Beyond the long glass wall that separates this space and the reading room are the Workshop Studios which can be booked for seminars, meetings and workshop sessions. They are equipped for presentations and the largest of these allows a flexible configuration of furniture for different events. The studios are separated by an innovative wall system, designed by the architects, which is fabricated in a workshop from high gloss polyester lacquered panels which are then assembled on site with invisible fixings producing a flush and almost seamless coloured wall. The e-system offers a range of components for presentation shelf, whiteboards, storage and display units. The frameless glass walls and doors of the studios looking onto the reading room incorporate a unique film manufactured in Japan which changes in transparency as you view it from different angles. This translucency achieves a degree of privacy to the users of the rooms as well as providing a visually compelling veil to the composition of coloured glass and coloured lacquer walls beyond. The architects selected furniture for the Centre which combines a classic chair designed in 1948 with the latest workbenching systems by Vitra. The furniture was trialled by the Library for wi-fi use in the foyer in 2005 and responds to the new demands within the library for flexibility and ease of reconfiguration. Achieving these, the Vitra system also competes well with the best of contemporary design and is consistent with the architect’s concept of inspirational space.