Seattle, United States of America

Seattle Central Library

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The library represents, maybe with the prison, the last of the uncontested moral universes. The moral goodness of the library is intimately connected to the conceptual values of the book: the library is its fortress; librarians are its guardians

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

As new media emerge and gain currency, the library seems threatened, a fortress ready to be taken by a marauding hoard of technologies. In this fairytale, the electronic becomes barbaric. Its intangible, ominous ubiquity, its uncontrollable accessibility seems to represent a loss of order, tradition, civilization. In response, the language of the library has become moralistic and defensive. Its rhetoric proclaims a sense of superiority in mission, social responsibility, value

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The last decade has revealed an accelerated erosion of the Public Domainreplaced by increasingly sophisticated and entertaining forms of the Private.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The essence of the Public is that it is free.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Increasingly public space has been replaced by accommodations of quasi-public substance that while suggesting an open invite, actually make you pay. The library stands exposed as outdated and moralistic at the moment that it has become the last repository of the free and the public.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Our ambition is to redefine the library as an institution no longer exclusively dedicated to the book, but as an information store where all potent forms of medianew and oldare presented equally and legibly. In an age where information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultaneity of all media and (more importantly) the curatorship of their contents that will make the library vital.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Flexibility in contemporary libraries is conceived as the creation of generic floors on which almost any activity can happen. Programs are not separated, rooms or individual spaces not given unique characters. In practice, this means that bookcases define generous (though non-descript) reading areas on opening day, but, through the collections relentless expansion, inevitably come to encroach on the public space. Ultimately, in this form of flexibility, the library strangles the very attractions that differentiate it from other information resources.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Instead of its current ambiguous flexibility, the library could cultivate a more refined approach by organizing itself into spatial compartments, each dedicated to, and equipped for, specific duties. Tailored flexibility remains possible within each compartment, but without the threat of one section hindering the others.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Our first operation was to comb and consolidate the librarys apparently ungovernable proliferation of programs and media. By combining like with like, we identified programmatic clustersfive of stability, and four of instability.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

Each platform is a programmatic cluster that is architecturally defined and equipped for maximum, dedicated performance. Because each platform is designed for a unique purpose, their size, flexibility, circulation, palette, structure, and MEP vary.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The spaces in between the platforms function as trading floors where librarians inform and stimulate, where the interface between the different platforms is organizedspaces for work, interaction, and play.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

By genetically modifying the superposition of floors in the typical American high rise, a building emerges that is at the same time sensitive (the geometry provides shade or unusual quantities of daylight where desirable), contextual (each side reacts differently to specific urban conditions or desired views), iconic.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The problem of traditional library organization is flatness. Departments are organized according to floor plans. Each floor is discreet; the unpredictable fits of growth and contraction in certain sections are, theoretically, contained within a single floor.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

In 1920, the Seattle Public Library had no classification for Computer Scienceby 1990 the section had exploded. As collections unpredictably swell, materials are dissociated from their categories. Excess materials are put in the basement, moved to off-site storage, or become squatters of another, totally unrelated department.

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The Book Spiral implies a reclamation of the much-compromised Dewey Decimal System. By arranging the collection in a continuous ribbon – running from 000 to 999 – the subjects form a coexistence that approaches the organic; each evolves relative to the others, occupying more or less space on the ribbon, but never forcing a rupture. For Seattle, the Spirals 6,233 bookcases are guaranteed to house 780,000 books upon opening, with flexibility to grow to 1,450,000 books in the future (without adding another bookcase).

Image: Fred Housel courtesy by Seattle Public Library

The traditional library presents the visitor with an internal matrix of materials, technologies, specialists. It is an often demoralizing process – a trail of tears through dead-end sections, ghost departments, and unexplained absences.

The Book Spiral liberates the librarians from the burden of managing ever-increasing masses of material. Newly freed, they reunite in a circle of concentrated expertise. The Mixing Chamber is an area of maximum librarian-patron interaction; a trading floor for information orchestrated to fulfill an essential (now neglected) need for expert interdisciplinary help.

The Mixing Chamber consolidates the librarys cumulative human and technological intelligence: the visitor is surrounded by information sources.

Architect: OMA|LMN A Joint Venture

Engineer: Arup / Magnusson Klemencic Associates

Principals: Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus (Partner-incharge)

Project Architects: Mark von Hof-Zogrotzki, Natasha Sandmeier, Meghan Corwin, Bjarke Ingels, Carol Patterson

Team : Keely Colcleugh, Rachel Doherty, Sarah Gibson, Anna Little, Laura Gilmore, John McMorrough, Chris van Duijn, Kate Orff, Beat Schenk, Saskia Simon, Anna Sutor, Victoria Willocks, Dan Wood with Florence Clausel, Thomas Dubuisson, Erez Ella, Achim Gergen, Eveline Jürgens, Antti Lassila, Hannes Peer, João Ribeiro, Kristina Skoogh, Sybille Waeltli, Leonard Weil, Ali Arvanaghi

Local Architect: LMN Architects

Partner-in-charge: John Nesholm

Project Directors: Robert Zimmer and Sam Miller

Project Architects: Tim Pfeiffer, Steve DelFraino, Mary Anne Smith, Dave Matthews, Vern Cooley, Pragnesh Parikh

Team: Chris Baxter, Jim Brown, Wayne Flood, Thomas Gerard, Mette Greenshields, Cassandra Hryniw, Roy Kim, Ed Kranick, Ken Loddeke, Howard Liu, Damien McBride, Howard Meeks, Byron Rice, Kathy Stallings, Page Swanberg

Arup

Structural: Cecil Balmond, Atila Zekioglu, Anders Carlson, Chris Carroll

MEP: Alistair Guthrie, Bruce McKinlay, Stephen Jolly, John Gautrey, Aung Oo, Vahik Davoudi, Amanda Brownlee, Russell Fortmeyer, Tony Cocea, Marina Solovchuk, Fiona Cousins, Christin Whitco

Fire: Armin Wolski, Jim Quiter

IT & A/V: Jonathan Phillips, Raymond Tam, Eric Lockwood, Menandro Domingo

Magnusson Klemencic Associates

Structural: Jon Magnusson, Jay Taylor, Derek Beaman, Hans Blomgren, Nathalie Boeholt

Civil: Drew Gangnes, Darin Stephens

Other Consultants

Acoustics: Michael Yantis Associates Michael Yantis, Basel Jurdy

ADA: McGuire Associates Kevin McGuire

Artists: Ann Hamilton, Gary Hill, Tony Oursler

Cost: Davis Langdon Adamson Steve Kelly, David Hudd, Alice Nguyen

Environmental Graphics: Bruce Mau Design Bruce Mau, Henry Cheung, Jim Shedden, Petra Chevrier, Anita Matusevics

Facades: Dewhurst Macfarlane & Partners Marc Simmons, Yu-Ting Chen; Front Marc Simmons

Facade Pre-construction Services: Seele GmbH Gerhard Seele, Siegfried Gossner, Thomas Geissler, Martin Kugler, Jenniffer Endress

Hardware: Gordon Adams Consulting Gordon Adams

Interiors: OMA|LMN; Inside Outside Petra Blaisse, Marieke van den Heuvel, Mathias Lehner, Lieuwe Conradie, Peter Niessen, Jaap de Vries; Maarten van Severen

Landscape: Inside Outside Petra Blaisse; Jones & Jones Ilze Jones, Jim Brighton, Shaney Clemmons

Life Safety: Pielow Fair Associates Bob Pielow

Lighting: Kugler Tillotson Associates Suzan Tillotson, Wai Mun Chui

Pre-construction Services: Hoffman Construction Washington Doug Winn, Bob Vincent, Dale Stenning

Vertical Transport: HKA Elevator Consulting Daryl Anderson