Seattle public library

Seattle Central Library (Source: Wikipedia)

The Seattle Public Library, built about 10 years ago and designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas, is a wonderful space notwithstanding its bizarre shape. I was very curious to see the building, which is located on a city block defined by 4th and 5th Avenues, and Spring and Madison Streets, having heard both strongly negative and positive comments over the years. Count me among the positive.

I will grant that, seen from above, it looks silly, and that they probably paid way too much for the design. At street level, it's a different story. It plays well with the street. The sidewalk on 4th Avenue goes by the glass front and an inviting doorway.

4th Avenue entrance

I'm less taken with the ground floor, which has a sterile, industrial-basement feel.

The children's room, to the left, is warmer, but with what I take to be a sad sign of these times.

The rest of the library is a mix of warm and whimsical, but very functional. There are elevators for direct travel, escalators for scenic travel, and steps for strenuous travel.

The non-fiction books, on floors 7-9, are arranged in a spiral. Fans of the Dewey Decimal System will recognize this as the art section.

The upper floors provide comfortable and quiet reading areas...

...as well as views of the city--here, the federal appeals courthouse...

...and here, downtown looking towards Elliott Bay.

I come from a small city, where our very excellent library fits on just two floors, so I don't know how I would feel about scooting up to the 9th floor to retrieve history and biography books, but this is a big library in a big city and I think I'd get used to it.

James Howard Kunstler is a severe critic of the library, and of starchitects in general. His problem is less with the outside appearance than with the disorienting nature of the interior, which he says is contrary to the function of the public building i.e. to help ground people and help them make sense of the noisy world around them. I don't know what if any alterations the library has made in the 9 1/2 years since Kunstler's commentary (cited below), but I found it quite the contrary. The lower floors were well-used, but--like Yosemite National Park--the farther we got from the entrance the less crowded and more quiet it became, and the upper floors definitely were the sort of oases urban life requires. Wayfinding was rather easy.
 
I liked being in every part of the library, and I think if anything I'm unusually sensitive to noise and disorientation--maybe especially so the day I visited, because that day had started at 5:42 a.m. with some guy outside my window yelling about the Book of Revelation. If I lived in Seattle, I'd be here a lot.

The 1906 version looks grander and less absurd, but does it play as well with the street?

SOURCE: James Howard Kunstler, "The Seattle Public Library and Other Award-Winning Disastrous Architecture," Kunstler Cast #05, 13 March 2008

MANY MANY MORE PHOTOS: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-seattle-public-library-central-library-seattle