Rem Koolhaas's OMA designed the Qatar National Library, which opened in 2018 on the Education City campus. The building is a diamond-shaped, single-story volume with the floor sloping away from the centre toward the walls, creating tiered terraces of shelving on all sides. The effect is that books surround you at every angle — a genuinely distinctive piece of library architecture.
The library holds around a million volumes and is open to the public (non-residents can get a day pass). The collection includes good English-language sections on Middle Eastern history and culture. The Heritage Library in the sunken centre of the building, holding rare manuscripts, historical maps, and early printed books from the Islamic world, is the most scholarly part and worth the visit on its own.