Dominique Perrault is famous for large-scale projects such as the Velodrome and Olympic Swimming Pool in Berlin. He was the first to make extensive use of stainless-steel mesh, in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1995. This has now become his trademark, and copied by designers the world over. In 2004 Perrault won the international competition for the new Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Now the client has suddenly cancelled the contract.