Gunnar Birkerts, one of America's greatest post-war architects, has realized an extraordinary glass mountain in the land of his birth - the new National Library of Latvia, a symbol of the country's independence struggle from the Soviet Union.

Birkerts was born in Riga to parents who studied Latvia's culture and folklore. He made his first architectural drawing in 1942 when he was 17. As the Soviet Union reoccupied the country in 1944 he fled westwards.

Birkerts invitation to design Latvia's National Library arrived on Christmas morning 1988. 'There was a call from a committee of Latvian architects,' Birkerts recalls. This was when Gorbachev had already allowed the forces of national identity to stir, but still two years before independence from the USSR in 1991. There had been intense interest when an exhibition of Birkerts' works was held in Riga earlier in 1988. 'I knew a symbol would be exactly what they needed after freeing themselves from the Soviets', he says. 'The question was identity.'

Writing in 1994, Birkerts referred to the 'organic synthesis' of his creative process, in which each parameter is considered 'before conceptual combustion can take place'. Further, he wrote that 'allegiance to history and culture, and not simply the mode of the day, is essential to the lasting quality I strive for in my architecture'. That would be particularly so in Latvia, where the magic cultural ingredient was found in the fable about a sleeping princess atop a mountain of glass, whose smooth surface defeats would-be suitors attempting to scale it to reach her. It's something he recalls that Latvian schoolchildren were taught, and the metaphor here is that the sleeping princess is freedom.

The Glass Mountain defined the National Library's form in sketches from 1989, and Birkerts says 'people embraced the idea'. Then, an alternative metaphor came forward: independence as a sunken castle of light that rises from the dark depths. The poet Mikus Krogzemis (aka Auseklis) described this in 1873 and it was put to music by Jazeps Vitols in 1889. The resulting choral song, Gaismas Pils (Castle of Light), is almost a national anthem, and its performance in 1985 is credited as stirring Latvia's reawakening as a nation.
The bookcase vitrine reaches to level 8, the lowest of three floors cut by the array of atrium skylights. Photography Janis Dripe

Ginta Zalcmane, head of the library's information service department, says that its two million books, ranging from a 1586 church handbook to telephone directories, are less than half the collection. Periodicals, posters, manuscripts, maps, music in a century of formats and more are in the national collection, currently spread across six locations. The State Library was established in 1919 in the centre of Riga. There, light falls through exquisite etched-glass windows on to ancient banks of card-index drawers, exposed wiring trails across peeling plaster in rambling back-corridors, tiny old lifts shudder, and in the labyrinthine damp basement, dense storage shelving heaves with books under low ceilings. It's romantic and beautiful, but in 2010 a floor collapsed.

The new library is 170m long and 44m wide, orientated almost north-south along the river, from which it is separated by a garden with paths jagged like tree roots. The library is a concrete structure clad with glass, its higher floors in a steel frame. A steeply pitched glass structure erupts where the long steepening slopes of roof would meet. This two-storey apex glass house, on levels 11 and 12, is where the metaphorical princess would have slept, but it will now host special events.

Throughout the building there is wood: Canadian maple flooring and Latvian birch panelling for the walls, which here merely enclose lift and stairs. An enclosed staircase (one of two) descends from level 11, its metal walls coldly bouncing light. All stairs and bannisters are wood, at Birkerts' insistence. From level 10 down, the building is effectively three separate slices laminated together. Offices are situated in the slice behind the west facade, facing inland, their windows forming horizontal slits with steel bris-soleil strips along them.

A great internal drama lies in the building's central slice. Below
In front of this glass wall, a scissor stack of staircases descend across the atrium, which is spanned on each floor by metal bridges carrying walkways, defining a clear square void from skylights to lobby. Columns around the atrium are marked with vibrant shades of the colors of Latvia's banknotes before it switched from lats to euros, changing on each floor for different denomination. This descent through red, then blue, then yellow, and so on, animates the great atrium's otherwise pristine continuum of metal and wood.

Construction (excluding fit-out) came in at €163m -- extraordinarily, the budget set in 2008 when work began. In January 2014, 14,000 Latvians formed a 2 km human chain to pass books from the old library to the new.

The Latvian National Library is the brainchild of American-Latvian architect Gunnar Birkerts, who is perhaps best known for his creations in the United States which include the Corning Museum of Glass in New York State and the Law Library Building at the University of Michigan. Its shape is a symbolic expression of the Hill of Glass and the Castle of Light found in Latvian folklore. Legend has it that the Castle of Light sank into an ancient lake and would only arise from the depths when Latvians were once again masters of their own land. The building hosts a variety of exhibitions and events.

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