Location from Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The original Foundation building on Terminus — where the Encyclopedists worked on their doomed reference book, unaware they were pawns in Seldon's plan to seed a new civilization.
The Encyclopedia Foundation was Hari Seldon's cover story — a project to compile all human knowledge into a single reference work before the Empire's fall destroyed it. The Board of Trustees took the mission seriously, spending decades cataloging and cross-referencing while the galaxy burned around them. They were brilliant, dedicated, and completely wrong about what they were doing. Salvor Hardin saw through it first. The Encyclopedia was impossible — no reference work could preserve civilization — but the colony of scientists Seldon had assembled on Terminus was exactly the seed population needed to build a new one. The Encyclopedists' outrage when Hardin sidelined their project was genuine and irrelevant. Seldon had used their sincerity as a delivery mechanism for his real plan. The buildings still stand, repurposed through the centuries — libraries became government offices, meeting halls became council chambers, the original encyclopedia archives became a museum. The institution's name persists as a fossil in the Foundation's official title, a reminder that the organization's stated purpose was always a lie.
A cluster of institutional buildings in Terminus City's oldest quarter — low concrete structures with the functional aesthetics of an academic campus. Libraries, offices, data processing centers, and meeting halls arranged around courtyards. The architecture is deliberately modest, reflecting the original mission's supposed humility. The buildings have aged into landmarks, their concrete facades weathered but maintained with the reverence Terminus gives its founding institutions.
Also known as: the Encyclopedia Project, the Board of Trustees, Foundation HQ