The wiz of downtown's awe-inspiring Central Library is that members of the former East German women's swim team would feel every bit as practically at home there as the mould of "Logan's Run." A little something for everyone.
Four years after the once-controversial project's pass completion, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his creation are a key part of the Seattle Public Library's celebration Saturday of the conclusion to its decadelong "Libraries for All" building program.
During my interview with him ahead his scheduled speech here on "Public Space," Koolhaas said he still didn't know what he was going to say and had been trying to contact the library for guidance. He subsequently canceled for medical reasons that I have no ground to trust were related.
I was warned before phoning the designer � whose name is suspiciously close to "Cool House" � in Rotterdam that he "likes to be intellectually challenged by questions and frankly doesn't have forbearance for light-hearted small talk." I imagine that's what winning a Pritzker Prize and qualification this year's "Time one C" of the world's most influential people will do to a person. So much for my extensive series of questions about the Joker's Ha-Hacienda.
Q: Your self-esteem must be higher than the Sears Tower.
A: Why?
Q: Because quite a few Seattle residents aforementioned unkind things when they initially adage your plan for the library.
A: Uh huh.
Q: Let me read you just a few: "The library is an insult to the volumes of outstanding literature to be housed within it." One individual called the design "insulting," as if Koolhaas were "thumbing his nose" at Seattle. And my favorite: a "mammoth fist thrust out from the business district soil, its 20-story middle digit upraised to the infinite." What do you think of all that now?
A: Well, I retrieve that you have to see it in linguistic context, and the context was in fact that Seattle had so far been, let's say, reasonably immune from prodigal architecture. But that I think both the experience with (EMP architect Frank) Gehry and the experience with (SAM architect Robert) Venturi had left the city in a estrus in footing of what they could contribute. So in a way I could sense kind of some of the skepticism.
Q: Now that it's wide recognized as a masterpiece, is your message to Seattle, "Ha-haaaaaa, I was right all along."
A: I was kind of baffled by your kind of assumption of self-esteem.
Q: It was a large throw to contract when you had so much skepticism.
A: Yes, just of course we were not unequaled. And I think that is kind of in reality one of the unmanageable and distorting things at the current moment, is that basically some architects are seen as tolerant of almost bullfighters world Health Organization somehow have got to toss off an animal, but you're part of a practically larger enterprise.
Q: I think there's a reason for that: as well many people have take "The Fountainhead" and it's ruined them for life.
A: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think that's in reality extremely inconvenient, because in that location was Deborah (L. Jacobs, former City Librarian), of course, and there was also a board, and we had a mountain of bonding in the beginning. So it's by all odds not an ego thing, you eff, and it's definitely not where you kind of are looking at for morons or ever think that somebody � you realise that some of the criticism is unfounded or naive or not particularly kind of ... benevolent, simply it really comes with the soil and it's not something that you kind of respond to in conceited terms.
Q: I can tell you that writers always wish they could go back and make 1 more rewrite. Is there anything you'd do differently about the library this many years down the line?
A: Uh, yes. I think that at some point we felt that some of the kind of way-finding could be improved, and we had some ideas how to do that. There were some kind of vertical circulation elements that were hidden and we were thinking of how we could make them more than exposed and more gauze-like, so I think it's on that level that at some point we thought we could do something more.
Q: You power actually do more work on the library in the future?
A: I don't know. We haven't actually talked around it, simply at some point we thought that that could be the case, or should be the case.
Q: How would you report the "Books Spiral" to an stranger who just landed and had never � OK, to the Seattle taxpayer who'd never been in the building?
A: Are in that respect any taxpayers left wHO haven't been in the building?
Q: I was but in it for the first time last week, I'm ashamed to say.
A: You were in it for the first time, and you're from Seattle?
Q: You're making me feel bad.
A: What explains your reticence?
Q: I have no valid, adult explanation.
A: Even an invalid explanation could be interesting. Bored by libraries?
But anyhow, basically the Books Spiral was kind of for us an architectural way of untying some of the lugubriousness of the typical depository library, where it kind of really dual-lane in a number of compartments that have very dull-sounding names like "humanity," "sciences," bombast, blah, bombast. We felt that those categories ar not necessarily the to the highest degree exciting and encouraging categories in terms of dividing a library, so it enabled us to create an undivided sequence of books where of course the divisions actually be and all the kind of cataloging systems do their project, but the point was to create a tolerant of single, undivided succession, because we felt that one of the points of a library was that there are accidents and that you find yourself in areas where you didn't expect to be and where you kind of look at books that are non necessarily the books that you're aiming for. So it was to create a kind of nearly arbitrariness � or to create a kind of walking see, an well-nigh kind of urban walk ... a genial of Rotterdam, a very efficient, aim aiming for limited destinations.
Q: There was some interrogative sentence of whether there'd be enough room for books. Is there and volition there be?
A: Yeah, that's not an issue. We were very scrupulous in terms of the number assessment, and so there is rich room for expansion.
Q: Public libraries are known as sanctuaries for the homeless � and as a one-time employee of a different library, I canful tell you they preferred the periodicals section. Did you take this into account?
A: Yeah, from the very beginning, and as well we did certain things because we knew that was the case, we knew that would happen, and we didn't want to hold out it. But on the other hand, we didn't want it to become the kind of dominant fact of the library. So it worked in terms of materials just also in terms of arrangements, only also in terms of different kind of sections, just something that we were selfsame conscious of.
Q: Seattle's the second most literate American city after Minneapolis (according to Central Connecticut State University's yearbook study). Surely you'd design a library differently in Texas, which has more than its fair share of cities in the bottom 10.
A: I think it's not only a matter of literacy, but I think it's likewise a slightly different political mood in the city. But it's also a number of really innovative kind of corporate entities there. So it's in truth a unique constellation of congress in a single place. And you can debate whether there is connection between all those forces and literacy, and there probably is, simply that's kind of partly a chicken-and-egg situation, I think. But anyway, we realized we were very fortunate with that context.
Q: Let's blab about Seattle architecture in general. The countless township houses and condos spreading around the city: sad or monstrous? Please pick one.
A: I think hat, basically, let me kind of limit myself to the good things. Seattle has an improbably beautiful topography, so that is really its unbelievable virtue, and you recognise it's kind of really interesting that you tin can have a major urban center that is so accessible to nature and where nature is such an important element. And for me that is kind of much more important than condominium and all the former paraphernalia that are kind of stream. Because that mutual genial of insight is unique in the world, OK? And no amount of condominiums behind destroy it.
Q: Tell me about the building you designed in Beijing.
A: It's the headquarter building for Central China Television, which is kind of one of the major TV stations in China. It's a building that consists of deuce parts, a working part and a kind of public percentage. It testament be finished next year. But nowadays you bathroom see the whole envelope. The envelope is finished but not the interiors.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: We also are doing a lot in the Middle East, besides doing a library in Qatar for the Qatar Foundation, which is kind of in truth the minute library we're doing, which will be totally different. We expected a band of libraries to make out our way, and we still try because it's one of my favorite kind of typologies, simply so far the only one is in the Middle East.
Q: I'd love to find out how you'd design the The George W. Bush Presidential Library. Any thoughts on that?
A: (Laughs.) It's very unlikely that we'll be asked.
Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com
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