 |
City books Dutch architect for library
Unorthodox designs full of 'exuberance,' 'joy' cited by trustees
Thursday, May 27, 1999
By STEVEN GOLDSMITH
Rem Koolhaas, a cerebral Dutchman known for turning architectural conventions upside down, was hired yesterday to design Seattle's new Central Library.
The five library trustees made what they admitted was the "bold" choice after visiting his buildings last week in Holland and France.
"Koolhaas' buildings had a joy and exuberance and a range of expression that I just found compelling," Trustee Linda Larson said.
Koolhaas also was the Seattle audience favorite earlier this month after witty and impudent presentations attended by an estimated 1,700 local citizens.
The lanky Dutchman poked fun at American zoning codes, bent the no-models rule of the library's design contest by forming shapes out of plain paper, and projected a drawing featuring a man wearing only boxing gloves.
Local arts aficionados ate it up. But when it came time to hire the person actually responsible for Seattle's $156 million main library, many expected the job would go to rival Steven Holl, an equally acclaimed architect and Northwest native with a Seattle building -- the Seattle University chapel -- already under his belt.
So much for safety.
Library officials yesterday said they did admire Holl's award-winning new Kiasma art museum during last week's visit to Helsinki. But after tromping through a Koolhaas-designed university in Utrecht, a museum in Rotterdam and a convention center in Lille, they were unanimous for hiring him and his firm, Office of Metropolitan Architecture.
"It was a wonderful experience," Library Board Chairwoman Betty Jane Narver said of the trip, "but we are entering scary ground."
Koolhaas, 54, recently designed in New York City what may be the nation's only theater auditorium with windows looking onto the street.
One of his buildings has glass floors, another reflective polyester walls. His futuristic Los Angeles headquarters for Universal Studios will -- if it ever gets built -- divide the company's activities among four enormous vertical tubes.
Seattle artist Norie Sato, who served on the library's advisory committee, said bringing in someone as explosively experimental as Koolhaas creates "a new paradigm" for a city known for architectural blandness.
"For once in Seattle," Sato said, "we've made a leap."
The biggest leap may be that so many people care. Not only did the architects draw standing-room-only crowds and rock-starlike media buzz, but officials from Mayor Paul Schell on down have been pressing library officials to create something worthy of a city entering the millennium as a leader in global trade and technology.
"This is the modern-day equivalent of building a cathedral in this city," said City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, an architect by trade.
Opening in 2003, the Central Library will be the centerpiece of a library-system rebuild and enlargement authorized when city voters approved a $196.4 million bond issue last November. Private donations will boost the system overhaul to more than $234 million. The Central Library will rise on a site between Fifth and Sixth avenues and Spring and Madison streets that has housed Seattle's main library for a century, first in the form of an ornate Carnegie library and now as a 40-year-old glass box that will be torn down late next year.
Library No. 3 will be the product of an intricate dance that begins now between Koolhaas and Seattle.
"The excitement is palpable," advisory panel member Matthew Stadler wrote in a e-mail to city Librarian Deborah Jacobs.
What some had expected would come off as European intellectual arrogance turned out in Koolhaas to be a willingness to seek fresh solutions to problems of cost, allocation of space and urban context, advisory panel members said.
Stadler preferred Koolhaas' exploratory, ear-to-the-ground musings to what he said would have been an "artistic statement" delivered by Holl.
A onetime scriptwriter, Koolhaas is a star in academia as well as architecture, teaching at Harvard when he isn't jetting off to lecture audiences around the world.
Also juggling building projects worldwide, his OMA firm routinely teams up with local firms; in Seattle, for example, it has talked with Benaroya Hall architects LMN.
While neither Koolhaas nor Holl has ever designed a library that's actually been built, Koolhaas has participated in three library competitions, including the Tres Grand Bibliotheque and Jussieu university libraries in Paris.
"We have become specialists without (yet) having built one," Koolhaas wrote to Seattle officials in March.
Now he will.
P-I reporter Steven Goldsmith can be reached at 206-448-8029 or stevengoldsmith@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
· Mall searched after fatal shooting, no gunman found
· Fire leaves two Arlington boys dead
· Shooting leaves three hurt, one dead in Skyway
more
101 Elliott Ave. W.
Seattle, WA 98119
(206) 448-8000
Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820
seattlepi.com serves about 1.7 million unique visitors
and 30 million page views each month.
Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
Send investigative tips to iteam@seattlepi.com
©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Terms of Use/Privacy Policy
