Seattlest Pix 09Nov07
Around the Sound: The Week in News
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Seattlest Pix 09Nov08
Well-known alterna-librarian Jessamyn West came to town recently, and finally had a chance to check out our flagship library. Her verdict?
I saw a real disconnect beween the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to areas that may have been public were forbidding and unwelcoming. There weren’t enough elevators. There weren’t enough bathrooms. There wasn’t a comfortable place to sit in the entire building. There were lots of “dead spaces” that, because of architecture, couldn’t really be used for anything and they were collecting dust. The lighting was bad. Stack areas were dim and narrow. The teen area seemed like an afterthought. Bizarre display areas with a table and some books on it were in the middle of vast open areas. Most of the place felt like it was too big and then the stacks felt too crowded and I had to climb around people working to find things. Shelvers shut down the entire “spiral” concept with booktrucks. The writer’s area in this library is a shadow of the glorious writers room in the old downtown building where I had a desk briefly.Ouch. Of course, these criticisms aren't new. Maybe we agree as a city that our Koolhaas building is way cooler than our Gehry building, but maybe we're all starting to agree that the bar shouldn't be set quite that low.
West's post includes a link to a review of the library by another recent visitor, Phoenix librarian Joe Schallan, who shares a great story:
I chatted for some time with a volunteer posted in the living room. I explained that Linda and I were librarians on vacation from Arizona, and she said they get a lot of librarians on vacation. While she was extolling the building to me, a twentyish young man came up and interrupted us. He loudly said "This building is anti-life . . . I HATE this building!"The library may be America's 108th most favorite architectural work, but the chorus of discontent only seems to get louder. (Maybe this is what happens when process doesn't get to ruminate over an idea long enough.)The volunteer smiled sweetly and said to me that the building certainly elicits all kinds of strong reactions.
We still like it -- it looks gorgeous, inside and out -- but it's not nearly as usable as hoped for. Herbert Muschamp's description of it as a "big rock candy mountain of a building" seems especially apt: lovely to look at, sweet for a few minutes, but too much rock candy isn't all that good for you. You can't live off the stuff.
Does anyone still love this building? Not just like despite its flaws, or think is an improvement over what was there, but love it?
Former resident (and former quiz host -- represent!) West concludes her piece with an explanation of why she left Seattle: "its idea of progress and mine were fundamentally at odds and I didn’t enjoy the destabilizing effect of a city always under construction and didn’t get enough from the things that were eventually constructed."
Photo: Seattle Public Library, by inzenity, from our pool. Thanks!
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I like the library :)
I LOVE the library, and not just because it looks cool, inside and out. I find the spiral stack design with the numbers on the floor makes books incredibly easy to find. There are lots of great places to sit and write using a computer. Reading or just musing on the top floor with the huge skylights showing sun or our glorious rain--wow! The reference room, with the public computers off to the side, is lovely. Art inside and out, wonderful shop, nice bathrooms (although we could use more, I agree)--the library is FANTASTIC. The library is both beautiful but a thing of great usability. I worship it!
Eh... the library and the EMP are so much alike to me: Interesting buildings but no real reason to go into them, which defeats the purpose, no?
That said, Seattle's library system is so decentralized and so net-based that I don't find myself going to the branches just to browse. I go to pick up and return books and that's it.
I like it; I like it a lot. It's got its wankiness here and there but, overall, I'm all for it. I could rave (and rant) on here but maybe I'll dust off an older post that I've had simmering on the back burner.
I went to the downtown library once, and got lost. There's a whole lot of "cant' get there form here" going on in the building - where you can see where you want to go, but finding the path to actually get there takes way longer than it should. Give me a boring but functional reading/study space.
T-shirt idea: image of the library on the back.
On the front, "I got lost in the Seattle Public Library."
My problem with the downtown library is that it seems extremely academic, in the derogatory sense of the word.
People like Koolhaas seem to have an extremely abstract idea of how people live and function, and there's a real fetishizing of the "New" that goes into architecture--without regard to that fact it likely ages poorly. All of which is to say that while it's theoretically impressive, it doesn't fell all that comfortable inside.
Moreover, I have to wonder if it's perhaps backwards to spend so much money to make a cool library rather than investing in library resources that might make our system known for doing well what libraries are supposed to do. I don't know of any recognition of the downtown library as a research bastion, and it does seem to lack the human element you get at some smaller satellite libraries where librarians who really believe in trying to get kids, for instance, interested in reading make the library something of an institution for the community. That's an extremely idealistic standard, I know, but there's something to be said for that, isn't there?
As for the architectural value of the library, a few years after it opened, has it really risen above the level of a novelty? It doesn't change the skyline, and its insularity doesn't force the public to embrace it. Really, it seems like little more than a tourism burean bullet point, even now. I might be wholly wrong on all these points, though--I'm not a frequent visitor--and welcome correction.
As a very large piece of public sculpture, it's lovely. As architecture, it's banal. As a library, it's abysmal.
Guest number 8. Nicely put.
It's better than a library near downtown PDX (if not their central library). It was horrible.
But I think I'd rather have my library warm, wood and marble themed, and with carpet. I don't like being in the new library. I want to get out as quick as I wanted to come in.
Before the new library was built I never went. When it opened I was curious. Now I go once every three months or so. And I don't just go to find a book and leave; I can always grab a table tucked away and "spread out".
I'm just one person, but I enjoy our library. And yes, I agree the library is academic. Duh
Nope, still hate it.
The thing I dislike most is the sound quality in the building. It sounds like a warehouse, not like a library.
But I do love the book spiral.
I love it, and I always did.
To Jeremy: The library is actually known for doing well what libraries are supposed to do. The SPL has extensive genealogy resources, and people do come from all over to do research there. Also, all libraries are becoming decentralized, as research happens online through extensive data banks. The SPL provides access to all of those subscriber databases for their patrons. Of course, that doesn't make it more community friendly, but it does make it more research oriented than most other cities public libraries.
-Meghan
Whine, whine, whine. The only sure thing you can say about Seattle is that no one is ever satisfied.
I love the Central Library! The fact that more people are using it than used the old library should tell you something: People like it and it's a success. If you don't like it, go to one of the branch libraries.
As for Ms. West: She left because her idea of progress and Seattle's idea of progress weren't the same? What kind of esoteric, intellectual nonsense is that?
The library is fantastic. Confusing and frustrating as it may be, with it's 3 slow elevators, the building is AWESOME. Its almost as if the downtown hobos become unsmelly as they walk in its doors. It's magical like that.
-marxiano
It's growing on me.
I find the central library really sad. I could care less about the architecture of my library, as I'm interested in library resources and ease of use. It's unfortunate that both of these were put aside in favor of a unique space.
I love the Central Library -- and mostly because it's not at all Seattle-esque. The building immediately makes me feel like I'm in a different, more progressive city/space. But the signage absolutely sucks. Maybe I should say the lack of signage sucks.
Jessamyn West has her niche as a complainer of all things library. I wouldn't put much stock into her comments. I've been to the new Seattle PL (yes, I'm one of those out-of-town librarians who have toured it) and for its benefits, it certainly has its flaws. But if buildings were why Ms. West left Seattle, she has a lot of other unspoken problems -- well beyond architecture -- to deal with.