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.

After six months in the new house, I came home yesterday to find a letter from the City of Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use that read:

A City of Seattle inspector has noted that violations of local ordinances exist on the premises identified above.

To avoid receiving a formal “Notice of Violation” which may carry penalties of $15 to $75 per day, please take action to correct the violation(s) checked below.

x Cut and remove any vegetation constituting a fire, health or safety hazard

x Cut and remove any vegatation on the property or the adjacent parking strips which overhangs any public sidewalk within 8 feet of the ground.

You can’t tell from the perspective of their enclosed photo, but my 6’3” frame had to jump to reach those branches. My guess is that a nosy neighbor reported the folks across the street (you know, the ones with waist-high weeds, two shopping carts parked in the front yard with a potpourri of empties scattered around the premises, who yell at each other from two feet away while sucking down longnecks — so unsophisticated, I mean really) and while the city was out on their cleanup crusade, reveled in our low-hanging fruit, so to speak.

Or it may have been that the city was had grown accustomed to citing our residence for petty violations — before our ownership — for noise disturbances and the like. When wife & I first looked at the house, we loved it for its charm and spaciousness, but it was rough around the edges and required a lot of maintenance, work that we’ve only scratched upon so far. There were a lot of guitars and Marshall stacks and soundboards throughout the house, nothing out of the ordinary for this city. We made an offer that afternoon.

The Name-Dropping Part of the Story
The next day our real-estate agent called back to say the offer was accepted, and by the way, the current owner is Dan Peters, the drummer of Mudhoney (and former fill-in drummer for Nirvana). So that explained the collection of recording equipment in the basement, the Alice Cooper doll in the bathtub, the Touch Me, I’m Sick sticker on the fridge. They were selling after ten years in the house. On a later visit, I mentioned to Dan that I’d seen his band play in Omaha about eight or nine years ago. “At the bowling alley?” “Yes.” Wife & I laughed at the coincidence and fancied images of past Northwest punk rocker parties in our house with Eddie Vedder stumbling down the uneven stairs, Kurt & Courtney bickering on the porch, Chris Cornell scarfing down potato chips, leaning on the kitchen counter. But no such evidence arose. All that’s left is a well-insulated practice room in the basement where you can scream and never be heard.

So last night I trimmed back the tree to appease the Inspector and any nine-foot pedestrians who walk up our street. While making our mayor proud, I noticed those neighbors had finally harvested the field of wheat they’d been growing in the front yard all spring. How irritating it is to be judged. How even more disparaging it is to judge. These thoughts never crossed my mind when I rented. Each month I paid my rent, and thought about the next place I was going to live.

Highlighting the intersection of design and rock ‘n roll, the Experience Music Project is running an exhibition entitled Paper Scissors ROCK: 25 Years of Northwest Punk Poster Design running through September 7th.

The idea of rock posters in a nice new museum seems a little out of context (come to think of it, the idea of a museum dedicated to rock’n’roll seems hopelessly restrained), but I’m still glad it’s happening. This review sums it up:

The problem with an exhibition of rock posters is that postering is messy, and exhibitions tend to be neat. This, in critical parlance, is a frame problem, and EMP has been saddled—and in turn, has saddled a few exhibitions—with a frame that is too bland, that tends to turn the chaotic, emotional experience of music into something neatly patted into a manageable shape.

In related news, the Stranger’s Poster of the Week has been added to the links page.

Here is an example of the vast online infrastructure the northwest has in its regional and local government: the Seattle Department of Transportation has a pothole repair page on its web site. Word on the street (yuk, yuk) says that after filing a report, potholes are often fixed the very next day.

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.

Just as the Seattle International Film Festival announces their roster of films for the 2003 festival (oooo), I have catalogued my entire 16mm Film Collection so we can start viewings at CS HQ.

My prizes, of course, are the feature length films, of which I have seven beautiful classic prints (ok, one’s a hokey western, but cooly kitch). That, and a few odd Woody Allen TV appearances and some great ’70s television commercials. Also an early documentary (which was often staged, and extremely condescending) by Luis Buñuel, copies of the first motion pictures ever by Louis Lumière. More local to the northwest, I have movies about the explosion and aftermath of Mt. St. Helens, including one 16mm home movie recording of an ascent of the volcano as it was bulging, days before it exploded. And dozens of documentaries and educational films.

1. I love 16mm because it’s clunky and beautiful. The actual light passing through celluloid, projected on a screen.. there’s no digital presentation that comes close to that kind of sensational image.
2. The colors.
3. You’re watching a real movie.
4. It’s low-tech. You can get a projector for < $25 on ebay.
5. Blockbuster has nothing like it.

1. You can’t fall asleep on the couch while watching movies (you have to get up to change reels every 45 minutes, and it’s a rude awakening when you let the film run to the end of the reel).
2. They eventually wear out, fade, turn to vinegar.
3. Of course there’s the noise. The constanst ch-ch-ch-ch of the frames chattering by is nauseating without a soundbox (which I have none), but you eventually learn to love it.
4. You can’t get much after the early 1980’s.
5. As my good friend CV says, “It’s extremely addictive. Worse than heroin.”

On today’s flight to San Jose we were joined by Washington Governor Gary Locke, who hopped on the plane right before takeoff. Interesting to note that now that the state’s in a budget crisis and he’s taken away a voter-mandated teacher’s raise, he’s gone the extra step to fly commercial first class instead of chartered luxury jets. Self-sacrificing, our governor.

The Choice Deli on the corner of 8th and 65th St NW is evidently known for carrying smut magazines:

Most convenience stores only stock well-known adult publications like Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. Then there are a few more daring spots that also offer titles like Barely Legal and that magazine with naked women on motorcycles. But the grand prize for convenient smut has to go to Ballard’s Choice Deli and Grocery. Choice carries over 25 titles—like Big Butt, D-Cup, Fox, Cuddles, and Young and Tight—and they don’t hide them behind the counter. Such free commingling of porn with milk, bread, and jerky may signal a significant slip in civilization’s decline or may be seen as a welcome rebuke to our nation’s puritanical mores.

But what I know about them is from their marquee that I drive by each day. Let’s follow the evolution of the sign since my first days of living in Ballard (all dates are from memory):

Spring 2001
The was the innocent beginning, with a Henry Weinard’s 6 pack on special.

HENRY WEINHARDS 6 PACK $4.99

June 2001 - October 2001
I’m not sure if this was the doing of a disgruntled employee taking advantage of a non-native English speaking storekeeper, or whether some high school kids rearranged the letters that just weren’t changed for months. The store is right next to the Ballard High School. This message was up there for the entire summer.

HARD WEINER 69 PACK

November 2001
After a short hiatus we were given this much more direct communication.

ME PENI HARD

March 2003
I don’t know what was on the sign between November 2001 and February 2003, but it was nothing memorable. Maybe it was the length of time between the wait that made this sign so great as a reference to earlier eras, or the short amount of time that it was up (1 day), but I giggled for hours after driving by.

ME PENI STILL HARD

March 2003 - Present
The day after the aforementioned title, it was suddenly changed to this, probably on the request of an upset neighbor. I can only wait and hope that the legend of the sign will continue to brighten my days.

ME STILL OPEN

The Seattle Monorail Project has released the Green Line Preferred Alternative Report today. This is important to us because our house is two blocks from the proposed line—close enough to be convenient, hopefully far enough away to be silent. The corner fruit & vegetable market, The Top Banana, looks like it will be saved and instead they’re planning on building the station where the brand new ugly Quiznos box curently sits (the box with diagonal lines on the map).

The vegetable stand is literally right out our back door, and now it look as though the Monorail station will be, too. As noted above, you can make out what appears to be our kitchen and garage on this map from page 27 of the report.