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Opening of New Seattle Library Draws Huge Crowds, Critical RavesSome 28,000 visitors attended the long-awaited May 23 opening of Seattle’s new central library, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The $165.5-million project has received overwhelming praise from architecture critics, including the New York Times’s Herbert Muschamp, who wrote May 16, “In more than 30 years of writing about architecture, this is the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review.”The 363,000-square-foot, 15-story facility has room for 1.4 million volumes—it currently holds 800,000—and features a four-floor “Book Spiral” providing access to 80% of the collection, a 10th-floor reading room proving 360-degree views of the city and Elliott Bay, and an expanded children’s library. In his opening remarks, Mayor Greg Nickels noted that patrons could bring drinks inside the new facility, reported the May 24 Seattle Times. “Is that a Seattle library or what?” he exclaimed. “Never again will Seattleites be parted from their lattes.” Earlier, City Librarian Deborah Jacobs said that despite the spectacular design, the Koolhaas building was designed “to house the book in a great way.” The facility is really about “finding the right housing and space for the book, and honoring it and protecting it so that it always can grow without taking away from anything else,” said Jacobs in the May 23 Times. The initiative Seattle voters approved in 1998 to build the new central library also included funds to renovate the city’s 22 neighborhood branches and to construct five new branches; the work is scheduled to be finished by 2007. Unfortunately, since the measure only covered the building program, the new central library will continue to operate under the reduced hours imposed by budget cuts last year, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported May 20. The system has faced recent funding shortfalls that prompted four weeklong shutdowns in the past two years. Posted May 28, 2004. |
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