Made in collaboration with students at the Paris Malaquais School of Architecture, the exhibition focuses on three French libraries designed by OMA, two of them unrealized but crucially important in the development of the typology of libraries and one about to go under construction.

The featured libraries, explored in a range of archival and new materials, are the Très Grande Bibliothèque in Paris (1989), with its "strategy of the void"; Jussieu (1992), with its continuous, ramped floors; and the Bibliothèque Multimédia à Vocation Régionale in Caen, scheduled for groundbreaking in 2012.

(IM)PURE, (IN)FORMAL, (UN)BUILT reflects on the importance of theoretical work in the history of the OMA. Until now, OMA's work in France has been a case study in the unbuilt: only four out of 45 French projects since the 1970s have been completed, but this incomplete work has built a framework with a massive impact both within and beyond the architectural domain. The exhibition explores the phases of architecture, from conceptualization to (attempted) realization, and questions the nature of the work, which has often been, in France, very controversial.

The exhibition opens today in the Amphithéâtre d’honneur at the L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, with a discussion between OMA's Clement Blanchet and co-curators Nasrine Seraji and Thierry Mandoul from the Paris Malaquais School of Architecture. The exhibition runs until 22 July.