The library was designed in the early years of Mecanoo, whose founding members, Erick van Egeraat, Henk Döll, Francine Houben, Roelf Steenhuis and Chris de Weijer, were graduates of TU Delft.

Protruding from the artificial hill there is a 40 metres (130 ft) steel cone which acts as a source of daylight and is meant to symbolize technical engineering.

[6][8] In the central hall the lending desk occupies the space at the bottom of the cone, surrounded by steel struts,[9] with the east wall covered by suspended steel-frame bookcases going up four floor and accessible via stairs.

[11] The library is located in the center of the campus next to the brutalist-style auditorium Aula, by Jo van den Broek and Jaap Bakema, providing a new spatial context to that building.

[14] The TU Delft Library is a founding partner of DataCite, a global network established to "improve access to research data on the Internet".