Thinking outside the book

I’ve been reading a Times article on the new central library in Seattle, designed by Rem Koolhaas (“The Library That Puts on Fishnets and Hits the Disco,” includes slideshow of photos and other renderings). Look at the photo, right. I’m almost speechless. In a word: bold. I love reading about the thinking and re-thinking behind any kind of design.

One of the platforms, called the Books Spiral, epitomizes the Koolhaas approach. Designed to place roughly 75 percent of the library’s collection in accessible, open space, this is the largest of the five platforms. It is a continuous, square ramp, four levels in height, that provides ease and clarity of circulation as well as storage for books. Koolhaas fans will recognize this feature from an unbuilt library he designed in the early 1990s for the Jussieu campus of the University of Paris on the Left Bank. Some critics thought the spiral concept defied gravity, common sense and safety. As realized, it is an entirely pragmatic solution to a common institutional problem: how to accommodate an expanding collection of books without having to divide particular fields of information over more than one floor.

Another interesting bit is a project diagram that consolidates and redistributes the space according to function. Cool.

I hope to visit it someday. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to visit a library. More information and photos are available at the library website; grand opening events begin this Sunday.

In other news, speaking of public buildings: the new National Museum of the American Indian, located on the Mall in D.C., opens on Sept. 21; funding shortages are threatening the construction of two proposed museums in San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Mexican Museum.