The competition for National Library of Iran was held in spring 1995 by the ministry of Housing and Urban Development. N.J.P consultants won the second prize in this competition.
The architectural characteristics of the project are as fallows:
This project comprises three main parts: closed book storage, reading rooms and a transparent skin that encloses the required sectors of the library.
The main concept of the project is inspired by this phrase of Naser Khosrow:

" Watch the angel running after the devil
Just as the melted gold runs once dripped over the tar "

The objective of applying this literary metaphor is to approach the concepts of knowledge and text (as the registered knowledge) in Iranian culture. This image (In Naser Khosrow phrase) that pictures the light penetrating through the dark space, has been applied in terms of defining a black glazing twisted surface on which the golden object (the closed storage) is set.
The golden object resembles a tablet. Tablet represents registration of human knowledge. In Iranian culture the destiny of universe is engraved in ” Preserved Tablet”. Therefore, in this proposal, the form of the tablet is employed to represent the closed storage and its settlement under the transparent skin represents its preservation.