The ground plan envisaged a circular distribution of functions. The fourth floor can be taken as an example. In the centre is the hall area, with natural lighting from above; the books are stored on open shelves in the central ring. Stairs, shafts and room for technical equipment are arranged at the students’ reading zone with desks along wooden compartments with opening windows. The ground floor has a low arcade running round it that is to be seen as an approach to the interior, like a “transition zone” between inside and outside, as Kahn deliberately omits a sharply defined main entrance. It is only on getting past this relatively dark corridor that the visitor can identify the entrance to the building, which is astonishingly placed on the north side, facing away from the campus and its other buildings. Thus the arcade represents an access ring that “catches” visitors coming from all directions: this is the actual main entrance. Before it is possible to get into the area where the book are it is necessary to go to the first floor, using an almost baroque staircase: it is only there that the magnificent hall begins. Of course this “way upwards” is intended as a symbolic ascent into the “Olympus of knowledge”, a gesture that Kahn uses for various institutional designs (Richards Building, Indian Institute of Management) and which is here emphasized almost to the point of monumentality by the form of the steps. The top floor is presented as empty on the outside, a “crown” for the building (similar to the parliament building in Dhaka). It is a roof garden with seminar rooms arranged in the interior.