Seattle Central Library
Central Library
1000 Fourth Ave.
Seattle, WA 98104
206-386-4636
Designed by the Dutch born, Harvard professor Rem Koolhaas and American born founder of REX Joshua Prince-Ramus, this open spaced library is full of light and has quickly become an icon in Seattle and tourist destination too, when it opened in 2004. An impressive 152 out of 167 people on trip advisor rated the library as "excellent" or "good" as a place to visit (when viewed in June 2012). A year after the library opened in 2004, it was visited by 2.3 million people and 30% of them were from out of town. At 11 levels and 56 metres high, the capacity to hold up to 1.4 million books and a huge area of over 32,000 square metres.
Part of the grand idea for the library was to create "living" spaces, inviting areas where people can relax as seen this photo.
The library has a spiral stair case that goes for 4 floors and contains the entire dewey system. It can accomodate changing collection sizes. This amateur footage is a bit jerky, but shows someone going up the escalators from the ground floor and the collection can be seen.
Seattle Library source Youtube
There is a very informative TED talk given by Joshua Prince-Ramus on the reasons behind the design and what they wanted to achieve. Because the needs to change over how space is used, the library is built in compartments with some areas having more flexibitily than others. The librarians weren't convinced at first about the plans, but according to Prince-Ramus they were very happy with the result! The first 10 minutes of the talk is about the library and worth the time to listen to!
Joshua Prince-Ramus source: TED talks
Finally a photo of the outside or the "Skin" of the building. The building is an unusual shape and divided people. I think at first I would like it, but after a while I might find it a bit grating to look at. A little like some angles of Federation Sqaure in Melbourne.
Perhaps a more grounding object associated with the library is this fountain at the front of the library is by George Tsutakawa a seatle born sculptor who spent a lot of time in Japan. Placed at the front of the library, I thought it was an inspiring piece of sculpure,
picture by Mary Ann Sullivan
I have found the create commons site a good place to find usable pictures for this blog and the google search engine has yielded many useful results, although I have tried other search engines like exalead and dogpile and iseek. Google scholar has been very useful in finding journal articles, however university accessible databases like EBSCO has increased my searching scope.
References:
Central Library
1000 Fourth Ave.
Seattle, WA 98104
206-386-4636
For my second library, I chose the Seatle central central library. Without having done much research into it, the pictures of it seemed interesting and it had won architectural awards, was hailed as the "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilirating". It became evident fairly quickly that you can read a lot about a place and see footage and pictures, but in the end one has to truly experience it in person to see what impact it has. I did find contradictory assessments of this library the more research I did, but from what I have seen, it is still a place I would like to visit.
Designed by the Dutch born, Harvard professor Rem Koolhaas and American born founder of REX Joshua Prince-Ramus, this open spaced library is full of light and has quickly become an icon in Seattle and tourist destination too, when it opened in 2004. An impressive 152 out of 167 people on trip advisor rated the library as "excellent" or "good" as a place to visit (when viewed in June 2012). A year after the library opened in 2004, it was visited by 2.3 million people and 30% of them were from out of town. At 11 levels and 56 metres high, the capacity to hold up to 1.4 million books and a huge area of over 32,000 square metres.
Part of the grand idea for the library was to create "living" spaces, inviting areas where people can relax as seen this photo.
 |
| Source: Jeffwilcox on Flickr |
The library has a spiral stair case that goes for 4 floors and contains the entire dewey system. It can accomodate changing collection sizes. This amateur footage is a bit jerky, but shows someone going up the escalators from the ground floor and the collection can be seen.
There is a very informative TED talk given by Joshua Prince-Ramus on the reasons behind the design and what they wanted to achieve. Because the needs to change over how space is used, the library is built in compartments with some areas having more flexibitily than others. The librarians weren't convinced at first about the plans, but according to Prince-Ramus they were very happy with the result! The first 10 minutes of the talk is about the library and worth the time to listen to!
Finally a photo of the outside or the "Skin" of the building. The building is an unusual shape and divided people. I think at first I would like it, but after a while I might find it a bit grating to look at. A little like some angles of Federation Sqaure in Melbourne.
 |
| Source : Wikipedia |
In fact, the layout of this building can actually be anxiety inducing according a study published in the journal "current directions in psychological science". After an extensive search on the swinburne library catalogue and journals, that was the only article I could find that directly addressed the psychological affects of the building on patrons.
Perhaps a more grounding object associated with the library is this fountain at the front of the library is by George Tsutakawa a seatle born sculptor who spent a lot of time in Japan. Placed at the front of the library, I thought it was an inspiring piece of sculpure,
picture by Mary Ann Sullivan
I have found the create commons site a good place to find usable pictures for this blog and the google search engine has yielded many useful results, although I have tried other search engines like exalead and dogpile and iseek. Google scholar has been very useful in finding journal articles, however university accessible databases like EBSCO has increased my searching scope.
References:
Alessandroi A & De Cindi F 2008, 'Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City' Ashgate Publishing, EBL Ebook Library, viewed 8 June 2012.
Seattle public library 2009, Seattle Public Library, 13 March, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp11MtnWmUo&feature=related>
Carlson LA, Hölscher C, Shipley TF and Dalton RC 2010, 'Getting Lost in Buildings', Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 19, no.5, pp. 284-289, SAGE premier, viewed 8 June 2012.
Seattle Central Library 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Central_Library>.
Rem Koolhaas 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem_Koolhaas>.
Joshua Prince-Ramus 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Prince-Ramus>.
Rex ny 2012,Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://www.rex-ny.com/work/seattle-library/>.
Seattle Central Library 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Central_Library>.
Rem Koolhaas 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem_Koolhaas>.
Joshua Prince-Ramus 2012, Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Prince-Ramus>.
Rahner, M 2008, 'Talking with Rem Koolhaas, the architect behind the Central Library', The Seatle Times, 9 September 2008, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008167399_remkoolhaas09.html>
Sullivan, M 2011, 'George Tsutakawa Fountain at the Downtown Seattle Public Library', Councelor@law,v iewed 8 June 2012 <http://www.wac6.com/wac6/2011/06/george-tsutakawa-fountain-at-the-downtown-seattle-public-library.html>
Sullivan, M 2011, 'George Tsutakawa Fountain at the Downtown Seattle Public Library', Councelor@law,v iewed 8 June 2012 <http://www.wac6.com/wac6/2011/06/george-tsutakawa-fountain-at-the-downtown-seattle-public-library.html>
Rex ny 2012,Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://www.rex-ny.com/work/seattle-library/>.
Seattle Public Library 2012, Trip advisor,Wikipedia, viewed 8 June 2012, <http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g60878-d558679-Reviews-Seattle_Public_Library-Seattle_Washington.html>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008167399_remkoolhaas09.html
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008167399_remkoolhaas09.html
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