Converse USA is the wistful ramblings of a British Fulbright scholar seeking to make sense of his life and studies in the United States of Whatever.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Seattle Central Library
The Seattle Central Library is situated at 1000 4th Avenue in the Downtown district of Seattle and sits neatly across an entire block, offering 4 different street entrances at 2 different street levels. From the street exterior the building is strikingly odd and yet has an angular beauty that is hard to properly describe. I have been trying for a weeks to create a clever metaphor for the design but have as yet failed to think of anything adequate.
From a distance the experience is like staring a mutated interpretation of a Rubik cube that has been washed of its traditional colours to be replaced with a hallucinogenic, silvery reflective quality that mirrors and mixes every passing cloud, shadow and light with static images of the surrounding buildings. The stark angles and shapes of the structure at first seem erratic and yet with time seem to blend together in a non-traditional shape.
The interior of the building does not fail to live up to magical, light enriched quality of the exterior – spread across 11 levels it utilizes and manipulates space to reinvent the concept of a conventional library. These levels do suffer with cheesy titles such as ‘The Living Room’, ‘The Mixing Chamber’ and ‘The Stack’ but their aesthetic and functional excellence allows you to forgive this exuberance.
As you walk around the building, each level has a unique character and atmosphere, which creates a tangible feeling of creative possibility and adventure. Around every corner and across every straight line there is a different view of the floor(s) below, the exterior skin of the building or an angular corner frame. Carefully attention has also been given to the transition between the levels giving a fluid, colourful motion to the building through a network of artful escalators, lifts and staircases.
It took about 45mins of aimless wandering, admiring this unique structure before I realised that I had as yet to consider its central purpose – books. This is not to imply that the building has in anyway lost purpose amidst its architectural significance – like some enviable people this building has both beauty and brains. ‘The Spiral’ best illustrates the centrality and importance of the books; a continuous book stack that stretches across 4 floors connected by gently sloping ramps. This allows the majority of the non-fiction collection to exist in one continuous run and acts as the accessible heartbeat of the library.
It is my humble view that the Seattle Central Library is an immense achievement and a truly modern, inspiring reaffirmation of the role of the library within society. Commentators have been warning that in our new digital era, the simple pleasure of a good book will be lost to be replaced by Kindle and what ever supersedes web 2.0. The Central Library is a living, energy-infused monument taking a stand, in part to embrace this change but also to stake a claim for the importance of books. I can only hope that more cities follow this enlightened view and that we all have the opportunity to make use of them!
The Seattle Central Library is situated at 1000 4th Avenue in the Downtown district of Seattle and sits neatly across an entire block, offering 4 different street entrances at 2 different street levels. From the street exterior the building is strikingly odd and yet has an angular beauty that is hard to properly describe. I have been trying for a weeks to create a clever metaphor for the design but have as yet failed to think of anything adequate. 
The interior of the building does not fail to live up to magical, light enriched quality of the exterior – spread across 11 levels it utilizes and manipulates space to reinvent the concept of a conventional library. These levels do suffer with cheesy titles such as ‘The Living Room’, ‘The Mixing Chamber’ and ‘The Stack’ but their aesthetic and functional excellence allows you to forgive this exuberance.
As you walk around the building, each level has a unique character and atmosphere, which creates a tangible feeling of creative possibility and adventure. Around every corner and across every straight line there is a different view of the floor(s) below, the exterior skin of the building or an angular corner frame. Carefully attention has also been given to the transition between the levels giving a fluid, colourful motion to the building through a network of artful escalators, lifts and staircases.
No comments:
Post a Comment