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The library sits on a steep urban site with a 29-foot (8.8-meter) height difference between its boundaries on Fourth and Fifth Avenues. At the corner of Fifth and Madison, the wedge-shaped base of the library diminishes nearly to a point. A further dramatic change of scale occurs at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the building. The visitor enters a vast "Living Room," a large unprogrammed space that offers Seattleites an alternative to brand-name coffee shops as a place to relax, socialize, read, and connect wirelessly to the Internet.

Straight ahead are the stacked and overlapping platforms that support the reading rooms and open areas equipped with computer work stations. Central to the building is a four-tier "Books Spiral" housing the nonfiction collection. This gently sloping pedestrian route, with stairs, ramps, and escalators, is sequenced according to the Dewey Decimal System. It has a capacity for 1.4 million books and other materials.

The floating effect I saw outside has been achieved inside by leaving the platforms unsupported at the corners. "The goal of the architects," says Jay Taylor, of the structural engineering firm Magnusson Klemencic Associates, "was to minimize the number of columns along the edges to make the platforms appear floating."

With columns pulled back from the corners, the cantilevering provides structural efficiency, reducing load stresses along the middle of deep box trusses that run around the perimeter of each platform.

To connect the library's sloping walls to the platforms, the engineers developed sophisticated connections based on bridge expansion technology. While the connections permit vertical movement caused by constant changes in loading (people moving around), they prevent lateral movement caused by earthquakes.

Dutch Influence in Seattle

This prominent project in the Pacific Northwest of the United States went to a Dutch firm almost by accident. Seattle-born Ramus received news from a family member of the competition announcement in the Seattle Times. He flew in from Rotterdam and entered OMA's enrollment for the competition the following morning. Then he and Koolhaas began work on the firm's proposal.

City Librarian Deborah Jacobs explains that architects were asked to submit only ideas, not models, for the design of the new $165 million library. The architects' proposals had to take into account "unknown futures, adapt to changes, and protect public spaces," she says.

OMA, in partnership with the Seattle-based firm LMN Architects, received the commission because, says Jacobs, "they are frankly just so smart, the way they thought about the problem."

Instead of drawings and models, the architects presented a concept book. In it, they wrote: "new libraries don't reinvent or even modernize the traditional institution; they merely package it in a new way."

The firm's design solution proposed the construction of an "information warehouse" that could adjust to the future expansion of the book and other nonprint materials collection and that incorporated an indoor public space to reduce "the accelerated erosion of the public domain."

During development, regular cost analysis meetings led to the rejection of some design ideas such as an emergency exit at the bottom of the Books Spiral, a grass roof, a second escalator to bring people back down through the Books Spiral, and colorful light wells to brighten up the drab gray top floor allocated to library management offices.   >>>

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Fifth Avenue elevation of the Seattle Public Library, by Rem Koolhaas, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and LMN Architects. Photo: Courtesy Seattle Public Library Fifth Avenue entry at dusk. Photo: Courtesy Seattle Public Library Fifth Avenue entry. Photo: Courtesy Seattle Public Library Structure meets pavement at Fifth and Madison. Photo: Courtesy Seattle Public Library Voluminous interiors of the new Seattle Public Library. Photo: David Owen, Artifice Images The "Living Room" of the Seattle Public Library. Photo: David Owen, Artifice Images View down to the "Living Room" with its floral carpets. Photo: Courtesy Seattle Public Library Landscaping through carpeting. Photo: David Owen, Artifice Images   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.