as well as multimedia computer terminals and two music rooms with facilities for composing electronic music. Other specialized services include a job and career centre, a business connection centre, a special service centre for newcomers to Québec, and a language laboratory. In addition to its collections, reading rooms, and audio-visual facilities, the Grande Bibliothèque also contains exhibition spaces, conference rooms, theatres, and auditoriums. Building The Grande Bibliothèque, which had been a pet project of former Québec premier Lucien Bouchard, was designed by Patkau Architects from Vancouver and Croft-Pelletier/Gilles Guité from Quebec City. Construction on the new 33,000 m² library, a $90.6 million project began in 2001 on the site of the former Palais du commerce. It was officially opened 23 April 2005 in time for the World Book and Copyright Day, during a year in which Montréal held the honorary title of World Book Capital given by UNESCO. The library was opened to the general public the following Saturday, April 30, 2005, and loans began on May 3. The contemporary-styled five-storey building is clad with U-shaped plates of glass of a type never used before in North America, placed horizontally on the copper uprights that run the whole height of the building. In June 2005 three of these plates of glass shattered. In the first three weeks of July 2005, three more of these plates shattered, an average of one breakage per week. Metal barricades and canopies were used to secure the areas until the problem was corrected. The national and universal collections are each housed in one of two chambres de bois ("wooden rooms"), a reference to Anne Hébert's novel Les Chambres de bois. These multi-storey areas are demarcated by walls of wooden slats, either allowing indirect natural light or blocking it according to the conservation needs of the collection. The slats are made of Québec-grown yellow birch, the official tree of Québec. In accordance with the Québec government's policy on integrating art and architecture, the building contains several integrated works of art: an exterior sculpture, Espace fractal, by Jean-Pierre Morin; a glass mural on the Rue Savoie façade, Vous êtes ici, by Dominique Blain; a kinetic luminous mural at Metro level, Voix sans bruit, by Louise Viger; a sculpture garden to the north of the building, divided into plots of which one will be developed with sculpture and landscape art each year; currently containing Jardin punk and Jardin