Seattle's New Look
In a city built on hills as substantial as those in San Francisco, it's fitting that the Seattle Public Library (SPL) expresses itself vertically with a set of offset volumes. A drawf among the tall structures of downtown, the SPL addresses its neighbors in a more sophisticated manner than sheer height. The spider's web of glass and steel that enshrouds the building revamps an old trope of modern architecture: the reflective building.
Originally demonstrated with buildings like HOK's Equitable Building in St. Louis, then more convincingly championed by IM Pei's Hancock Tower in Boston, some modern buildings sought to reflect the sky truly, like a gem, and in doing so to approach the point of disappearing: blue into blue.
If this modern aim was a kind of photographic goal the SPL approaches reflectivity in the mode of cinema verite: all the reality of the city captured and displayed in the distorted planes of the building's exterior. This is a building embracing its downtown location-- reflecting the grit of Seattle's homeless legions, its traffic jams, its cloudy skies in addition to the beauty of the Day to Day, the neighboring monumental buildings, maybe even the distant mountains. SPL makes no excuses about itself by trying to disappear, on the contrary it exhibits great editorial presence. An active presence that does what only great editors can: arrange common images with new meaning.
After reading through the Seattle Library's extensive documentation of the project I have to wonder whether this visual effect is a coincidence. Certainly it's never mentioned in the competition winning concept book that OMA produced, nor is the effect demonstrated in photographs of the models. In both this photograph and this rendering one can see the facets of the building in various shades of color which hint at degrees of reflectivity. However, the experience of the building is much more forceful not only because the reflections are much more powerful but because of the massing itself.
Instead of normal floor slabs stacked one on top of the other the SPL's floors are jumbled like a precarious pile of plates. Formally balanced with a spiraling composition, this adjustment is what accounts for the angled facades: it's like a web draped over the plates as they are shifted to and fro. This unusual arrangement of the massing has further effects: because the footprint on the ground floor does not match the profile of higher floors, when approaching the building from down the street one may see the top floor first. At a distance of a few blocks the ground floor is not visible because it is set back, yet the top reading room presides over the street and a small park across the way. This peek-a-boo combined with the reflective complexity of the SPL give one great hope that the interior will be equally as masterful and the building a success.
What one hopes is that the city will actually use and appreciate the library. Whether this happens or not the Seattle Public Library is a welcome addition to the civic architecture in America.
Reflection images from here and here.
--Posted 02/17/04 03:26AM