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• mohit - Mar 28 2007 | seattle, library, reading, architecture

  Despite the complaints in this article, I actually find the 10th floor of the Seattle Central Library a better place to read than that in any other library. However, I still prefer coffeeshops -- just because I like background noise.

  Quoted: The 10th-floor reading room is quieter, more intimate, and yet more stimulating. Punched into the city skyline like a rhomboid treehouse, it connects startlingly with Seattle's urban energy. That may be a positive environment for the digestion of knowledge here in the 21st century. But once the exhilaration subsides, the truth emerges: The room is badly designed and cheesily detailed. The drab plastic study cubicles fail to resonate with the jazzy character of the building envelope.
• eric - Mar 28 2007 | books, art, design, thepugetnews, architecture, news, Rem Koolhaas

  The Seattle P-I has a wonderful exploratory piece on the failures of the new library. Lauded for "[...launching] both the image and substance of the Seattle Public Library into a new era" while chastised for lacking spaces "conducive to intimacy with a book," this is a fair and well-executed opinion piece placing its finger on a distinct lack of warmth. Indeed, I have found that the mixing chamber looks a little too inspired by Gilliam's "Brazil." This is a building which focuses on the design of access to information without much thought to the ingestion of that information.

  I love taking visitors to see the new library but I've never actually gone there to read even though it's a scant two blocks away from my work. This seems odd to me considering that I spend about an hour a day reading at one of several local coffee shops. I do want to try going for a good read on the 10th floor, if for nothing other than the view, but I'd love to see what the author of this piece is calling for - a timely reconsideration and re-examination. Many of the issues (furniture / warmth) are with superficial and not structural elements, they can be changed.

  Quoted: I'm beginning to suspect that the building's celebrated splotches of weirdness -- the red sea-monster-bowel corridors on the fourth level, the bile-yellow elevators and escalators, the vertiginous canyon overlooks on the upper levels -- exist to draw attention away from the fact that most of its work and pleasure spaces are actually cheaply finished or dysfunctional. And that the building's working viscera are failing at fulfilling the promise of its stunning skin.

  • mohit - Mar 28 2007
    

    i read this article while i was waiting for coffee at umbria. i prefer reading in a coffeeshop (as compared to a library) anyday. i think it has to do more with the protocol in libraries being 'stay quiet' than anything else.

  • nadine - Mar 29 2007
    

    I loved reading in our house (aka dorm) library at college. It was a traditional looking library - all wood, leather and chandaliers.. but it also had blankets and teddy bears, a stack of interesting comics in the middle. It had big tables with good lighting where you could spread your books and papers out and little nooks with armchairs that you could curl up into with a book. None-a-that in the Seattle public library.