Seattle Library Opening Day Photos

Yesterday was opening day for Seattle’s new Central Library, designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas. This is the first Koolhaas building I’ve toured, having known him previously through his books and lectures. Before yesterday I’d only admired his writing and thoughts about the design process. Now I can say I admire his architecture.

Many reviews of the new library have taken note of Seattle’s disasterous past when big name architects have come to town, with the story concluding that Seattle is skeptical of high-falutin, fast-talking architects — I don’t buy it. It’s true that Robert Venturi’s Seattle Art Museum was a miserable failure with it’s “staircase to nowhere” and other grandiose let-downs. The other common example is Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project, which I often find myself defending with its glimmering curves and bulbous facade. But I see no reason for the new library to be as polemic as some make it out: so what if you think it looks like an air duct? It’s highly functional, and far more interesting than the football stadium that cost Seattle residents three times more.

Past the gathering crowd and news crews, I was blown away the instant I walked in. The concept is perfect for Seattle — a place typecast for its drizzle — an outer shell containing an interior structure of multiple layers. It creates an indoor atmosphere with plants and nooks and private and public seating areas creating a great space year round.

Up higher, I felt a bit of unease on some of those high overhangs with uneven floors and long drops, even though I was safely behind a railing or a glass wall. Especially with it being as crowded as it was I can see someone with acrophobia really suffering. I was surprised by the steep slope of some of the stairs and the fact that some didn’t have railings.. blasphemy! Just wait until the first kid, screwing around, scrapes his knee because he fell sideways off a stairway with no railing.

One of my favorite details was the system of odd characters on plasma screen televisions dressed in campy-European flight attendant suits giving out pre-recorded directions and information about the library. I’m sure some fledging architecture student will write a term paper on their aesthetic someday real soon.

One thing that puzzled me in the NY Times’ glowing review of the building last Sunday was when reviewer Herbert Muschamp raved about the setting. Huh? The location is on a steep hill surrounded by skyscrapers — a pedestrian dead zone. Sure, you have slim views between the surrounding glass and steel structures for glancing water and mountain views, but the setting, other than being convenient for many downtown workers, is lacking.

The Seattle Times reported 25,000 visitors yesterday. There were a few areas that were really overcrowded and claustrophobic with that many people, but overall, the library held up well under the strain of the crowds. Plus I got my cut-out cardboard model of the library. Just need a gluestick and I’ll have my desktop cardboard replica. From the outer diamond shell, the interior, and all the systems at work make this a splendid creation. I don’t know if Seattle is deserving.

In Rem Readings the NY Times talks about Seattle’s distrust of the new Rem Koolhaas design for the Seattle Public Library.

Much of the library backlash can be attributed to the fear of being conned by big-city hucksters. This isn’t just xenophobia. People in Seattle have reason to feel crabby about buildings designed by famous architects. Twelve years ago, we got Robert Venturi’s dull — yet impossible to navigate — Seattle Art Museum, dominated by a gigantic staircase to nowhere. Its massive facade inspired a general yawn. In 2000, Frank Gehry gave us the garishly colored, extravagantly crumpled and disarmingly silly Experience Music Project.

There is a feeling that big city architecture doesn’t belong here, especially since we’re not offered the signature buildings, but the stylized, paycheck-generating derivatives. The Space Needle is uniquely Seattle, but the EMP is not quite as impressive as Gehry’s museum in Bilboa—always compared to the architect’s more popular previous work.

Rem’s library seems different and I hope that it is. He certainly breaks new ground in his manifestos about architecture. I have followed his books and other writing about place, process, globalization and media with much greater interest. The NY Prada sotre was his answer to the realization that most public space was retail space—why weren’t high-profile projects going on there? But few of these manifestos have been turned into architecture, and fewer still have been seen as successes.

Rem has achieved pop-architecture status without creating memorable buildings. So with the Seattle Public Library, there is a chance that both the architect and the city can achieve architectural significance come next year when the library opens.