Seattle Central Library
Encyclopedia
The Seattle Public Library's Central Library is the flagship library of The Seattle Public Library
system. The 11-story (185 feet or 56 meters high) glass
and steel
building
in downtown Seattle, Washington was opened to the public on Sunday, May 23, 2004. Rem Koolhaas
and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN were the principal architects and Hoffman Construction Company of Portland, Oregon, was the general contractor. The 362,987 square foot (34,000 m²) public library
can hold about 1.45 million book
s and other materials, features underground public parking
for 143 vehicles, and includes over 400 computers open to the public. Over 2 million individuals visited the new library in its first year. It is the third Seattle Central Library building to be located on the same site at 1000 Fourth Avenue, the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Madison
and Spring Streets. The library has a unique, striking appearance, consisting of several discrete "floating platforms" seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around glass skin. Architectural tours of the building began on June 5, 2006.
In 2007, the building was voted #108 on the American Institute of Architects
' list of Americans' 150 favorite structures in the US. It was one of two Seattle buildings included on the list of 150 structures, the other being Safeco Field
.
, whose patronage of libraries later included five others in Seattle, donated $200,000 for the construction of the new library. That library, at 55000 square feet (5,109.7 m²), with an extension built in 1946, eventually became too small and cramped for a city population that, by the time the library was replaced, had roughly doubled since the library's first opening.
A second library, at five stories and 206000 square feet (19,138 m²), was built at the site of the old Carnegie library in 1960. The new building designed by architects Bindon and Wright, with Decker, Christenson, and Kitchin as associates, featured an international-style architecture and an expanded interior, with features such as drive-thru service to offset the lack of available parking. George Tsutakawa
's "Fountain of Wisdom" on the Fifth Avenue side (relocated to Fourth Avenue in the current library) was the first of that artist's many sculptural fountains. A remodeling finished in 1972 gave the public access to the fourth story, dedicated to the arts and sound recordings. By the late 1990s, the library became too cramped again and two-thirds of its materials were held in storage areas inaccessible to patrons. Renewed consciousness of regional earthquake dangers drew concern from public officials about the seismic risks inherent to the building's design.
Funding for the new Seattle Central Library building, as well as other construction projects throughout the library system, was provided by a $196.4 million bond measure
, called "Libraries for All," approved by Seattle voters on November 3, 1998. The project also received a $20 million donation from Bill Gates
, of Microsoft
.
Rem Koolhaas
and Joshua Prince-Ramus
of the Dutch
firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture
(OMA), working in conjunction with the Seattle firm LMN Architects
, served as the building's principal architect
s. Ramus served as the partner in charge. Ironically, OMA was not one of the firms invited to compete for the project. Ramus, formerly a Seattle resident, found out from his mother one day in advance that the library board was inviting interested firms to attend a mandatory public meeting. He flew in, and OMA ended up winning the project.
Deborah Jacobs, Chief Librarian in the Seattle Public Library
system, spearheaded the project from the library's perspective and served as the primary client voice, while Betty Jane Narver served as president of the Library Board.
The architects conceived the new Central Library building as a celebration of book
s, deciding after some research that despite the arrival of the 21st century and the "digital age," people still respond to books printed on paper
. The architects also worked to make the library inviting to the public, rather than stuffy, which they discovered was the popular perception of libraries as a whole.
Although the library is an unusual shape from the outside, the architects' philosophy was to let the building's required functions dictate what it should look like, rather than imposing a structure and making the functions conform to that.
For example, a major section of the building is the "Books Spiral," (designed to display the library's nonfiction collection without breaking up the Dewey Decimal System classification onto different floors or sections). The collection spirals up through four stories on a continuous series of shelves. This allows patrons to peruse the entire collection without using stairs or traveling to a different part of the building.
Other internal features include; the Microsoft
Auditorium on the ground floor, the "Living Room" on the third floor (designed as a space for patrons to read), the Charles Simonyi
Mixing Chamber (a version of a reference desk
that provides interdisciplinary staff help for patrons who want to have questions answered or do research), and the Betty Jane Narver Reading Room on level 10 (with views of Elliott Bay
).
New functions include automatic book sorting and conveyance, self-checkout for patrons, pervasive wireless communications among the library staff, and over 400 public computer terminals.
The opinion of architectural critics and the general public has been mixed; many like the new library but are less fond of its unusual design. Paul Goldberger, writing in The New Yorker
, declared the Seattle Central Library "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating." The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Washington awarded the Library its Platinum Award for innovation and engineering in its "structural solutions". The library also received a 2005 national AIA Honor Award for Architecture.http://blog.aia.org/favorites/2007/02/108_seattle_public_library_200.html
Recently Lawrence Cheek, the architecture critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, reconsidered his earlier praise. Cheek revisited the building in 2007 and found it "confusing, impersonal, uncomfortable, oppressive" on the whole, with various features "decidedly unpleasant," "relentlessly monotonous," "badly designed and cheesily detailed," "profoundly dreary and depressing,"
and "cheaply finished or dysfunctional," concluding that his earlier praise for the building was a "mistake."http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/309029_architecture27.html?source=mypi
The library was also roundly condemned by the Project for Public Spaces
, which noted "if the library were a true 'community hub,' its most active areas would connect directly to the street, spinning off activity in every direction. That is where Koolhaas's library, sealed away from the sidewalks and streets around it, fails completely." It went on to note "critics have cast it as a masterpiece of public space design. As if blinded by the architect's knack for flash and publicity, they cannot locate, or perhaps refuse to acknowledge, the faults in his creation."
On the other hand, usage of the building is more than double the predicted volume. In the library's first year, 2.3 million people came to visit the library, roughly 30% were out-of-town. The library was also found to have generated $16 million in new economic activity for its surrounding area during this period.
Seattle Public Library
The Seattle Public Library is the public library system serving Seattle, Washington, USA. It was officially established by the city in 1890, though there had been efforts to start a Seattle library as early as 1868. There are 26 branches in the system, most of them named after the neighborhoods in...
system. The 11-story (185 feet or 56 meters high) glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
and steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
building
Building
In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...
in downtown Seattle, Washington was opened to the public on Sunday, May 23, 2004. Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN were the principal architects and Hoffman Construction Company of Portland, Oregon, was the general contractor. The 362,987 square foot (34,000 m²) public library
Public library
A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...
can hold about 1.45 million book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
s and other materials, features underground public parking
Parking
Parking is the act of stopping a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied for more than a brief time. Parking on one or both sides of a road is commonly permitted, though often with restrictions...
for 143 vehicles, and includes over 400 computers open to the public. Over 2 million individuals visited the new library in its first year. It is the third Seattle Central Library building to be located on the same site at 1000 Fourth Avenue, the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Madison
Madison Street (Seattle)
Madison Street is a major thoroughfare of Seattle, Washington. The street connects Madison Park on Lake Washington leading south-west to First Hill and Downtown Seattle and eventually the Washington State Route 99 running north-south along the Puget Sound...
and Spring Streets. The library has a unique, striking appearance, consisting of several discrete "floating platforms" seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around glass skin. Architectural tours of the building began on June 5, 2006.
In 2007, the building was voted #108 on the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
' list of Americans' 150 favorite structures in the US. It was one of two Seattle buildings included on the list of 150 structures, the other being Safeco Field
Safeco Field
Safeco Field is a retractable roof baseball stadium located in Seattle, Washington. The stadium, owned and operated by the Washington-King County Stadium Authority, is the home stadium of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball and has a seating capacity of 47,878 for baseball...
.
History
There has been a library located in downtown Seattle as far back as 1891; however, the library did not have its own dedicated facilities and it was frequently on the move from building to building. The Seattle Carnegie Library, the first permanent library located in its own dedicated building at Fourth Avenue and Madison Street, opened in 1906 with a Beaux-Arts design by Peter J. Weber. Andrew CarnegieAndrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
, whose patronage of libraries later included five others in Seattle, donated $200,000 for the construction of the new library. That library, at 55000 square feet (5,109.7 m²), with an extension built in 1946, eventually became too small and cramped for a city population that, by the time the library was replaced, had roughly doubled since the library's first opening.
A second library, at five stories and 206000 square feet (19,138 m²), was built at the site of the old Carnegie library in 1960. The new building designed by architects Bindon and Wright, with Decker, Christenson, and Kitchin as associates, featured an international-style architecture and an expanded interior, with features such as drive-thru service to offset the lack of available parking. George Tsutakawa
George Tsutakawa
George Tsutakawa , sculptor and painter, was born in Seattle, Washington. Tsutakawa spent much of his childhood in Okayama, Japan. He returned to Seattle at the age of 16, where he attended Broadway High School before earning a BFA at the University of Washington. One of his early mentors was...
's "Fountain of Wisdom" on the Fifth Avenue side (relocated to Fourth Avenue in the current library) was the first of that artist's many sculptural fountains. A remodeling finished in 1972 gave the public access to the fourth story, dedicated to the arts and sound recordings. By the late 1990s, the library became too cramped again and two-thirds of its materials were held in storage areas inaccessible to patrons. Renewed consciousness of regional earthquake dangers drew concern from public officials about the seismic risks inherent to the building's design.
Planning the new library
Municipal bond
A municipal bond is a bond issued by a city or other local government, or their agencies. Potential issuers of municipal bonds includes cities, counties, redevelopment agencies, special-purpose districts, school districts, public utility districts, publicly owned airports and seaports, and any...
, called "Libraries for All," approved by Seattle voters on November 3, 1998. The project also received a $20 million donation from Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
, of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
.
Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
and Joshua Prince-Ramus
Joshua Prince-Ramus
Joshua Prince-Ramus is an American architect. Prince-Ramus is Principal of REX, an internationally acclaimed architecture and design firm based in New York City. REX recently completed the AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, Texas and the Vakko Fashion Center and...
of the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Office for Metropolitan Architecture
OMA , is a Rotterdam based architecture firm of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.The firm was founded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis.-History:...
(OMA), working in conjunction with the Seattle firm LMN Architects
LMN Architects
LMN is an architecture firm based in Seattle in the United States. The company was founded in 1979, and provides planning and design services to create convention centers, cultural arts venues, higher education facilities, commercial and mixed-use developments....
, served as the building's principal architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
s. Ramus served as the partner in charge. Ironically, OMA was not one of the firms invited to compete for the project. Ramus, formerly a Seattle resident, found out from his mother one day in advance that the library board was inviting interested firms to attend a mandatory public meeting. He flew in, and OMA ended up winning the project.
Deborah Jacobs, Chief Librarian in the Seattle Public Library
Seattle Public Library
The Seattle Public Library is the public library system serving Seattle, Washington, USA. It was officially established by the city in 1890, though there had been efforts to start a Seattle library as early as 1868. There are 26 branches in the system, most of them named after the neighborhoods in...
system, spearheaded the project from the library's perspective and served as the primary client voice, while Betty Jane Narver served as president of the Library Board.
Design
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
s, deciding after some research that despite the arrival of the 21st century and the "digital age," people still respond to books printed on paper
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
. The architects also worked to make the library inviting to the public, rather than stuffy, which they discovered was the popular perception of libraries as a whole.
Although the library is an unusual shape from the outside, the architects' philosophy was to let the building's required functions dictate what it should look like, rather than imposing a structure and making the functions conform to that.
For example, a major section of the building is the "Books Spiral," (designed to display the library's nonfiction collection without breaking up the Dewey Decimal System classification onto different floors or sections). The collection spirals up through four stories on a continuous series of shelves. This allows patrons to peruse the entire collection without using stairs or traveling to a different part of the building.
Other internal features include; the Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Auditorium on the ground floor, the "Living Room" on the third floor (designed as a space for patrons to read), the Charles Simonyi
Charles Simonyi
Charles Simonyi is a Hungarian-American computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft's application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft's flagship Office suite of applications. He now heads his own company, Intentional Software, with the aim of developing and marketing his...
Mixing Chamber (a version of a reference desk
Library reference desk
The reference desk or information desk of a library is a public service counter where professional librarians provide library users with direction to library materials, advice on library collections and services, and expertise on multiple kinds of information from multiple sources.- Explanation...
that provides interdisciplinary staff help for patrons who want to have questions answered or do research), and the Betty Jane Narver Reading Room on level 10 (with views of Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay is the body of water on which Seattle, Washington, is located. A line drawn from Alki Point in the south to West Point in the north serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound...
).
New functions include automatic book sorting and conveyance, self-checkout for patrons, pervasive wireless communications among the library staff, and over 400 public computer terminals.
Response
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, declared the Seattle Central Library "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating." The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Washington awarded the Library its Platinum Award for innovation and engineering in its "structural solutions". The library also received a 2005 national AIA Honor Award for Architecture.http://blog.aia.org/favorites/2007/02/108_seattle_public_library_200.html
Recently Lawrence Cheek, the architecture critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
, reconsidered his earlier praise. Cheek revisited the building in 2007 and found it "confusing, impersonal, uncomfortable, oppressive" on the whole, with various features "decidedly unpleasant," "relentlessly monotonous," "badly designed and cheesily detailed," "profoundly dreary and depressing,"
and "cheaply finished or dysfunctional," concluding that his earlier praise for the building was a "mistake."http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/309029_architecture27.html?source=mypi
The library was also roundly condemned by the Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. Planning and design rooted in the community form the cornerstone of PPS’s work. Building on the techniques of William H...
, which noted "if the library were a true 'community hub,' its most active areas would connect directly to the street, spinning off activity in every direction. That is where Koolhaas's library, sealed away from the sidewalks and streets around it, fails completely." It went on to note "critics have cast it as a masterpiece of public space design. As if blinded by the architect's knack for flash and publicity, they cannot locate, or perhaps refuse to acknowledge, the faults in his creation."
On the other hand, usage of the building is more than double the predicted volume. In the library's first year, 2.3 million people came to visit the library, roughly 30% were out-of-town. The library was also found to have generated $16 million in new economic activity for its surrounding area during this period.
External links
- Seattle Public Library Central Library home page
- Brief History of The Seattle Public Library
- Rawlinson, Linnie. 'Creating the perfect public space: Seattle Central Library', CNN, 2 August, 2007. With image gallery.
- Seattle Times special section
- Goldberger, P.Paul GoldbergerPaul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...
(May 17, 2004). "The Sky Line: High-Tech Bibliophilia". The New Yorker. - Muschamp, H.Herbert MuschampHerbert Mitchell Muschamp was an American architecture critic.- Early years :Born in Philadelphia, Muschamp described his childhood home life as follows: “The living room was a secret. A forbidden zone. The new slipcovers were not, in fact, the reason why sitting down there was taboo. That was...
(May 16, 2004). The library that puts on fishnets and hits the disco. The New York Times. - The 2004 Annual Report (PDF) of the library system includes many images of the library, brief biographies of the artists whose work was incorporated into the structure, etc.
- Review and overview by architecture critic Lynn Becker
- Photos of exterior and interior of building