Seattle Public Library

Brief Information

For the Seattle Public Library, what matters is not only the collection, but the very habit of changing its shell. In its first ten years, the library moved five times from one building to another, then survived the fire of 1901: most of the books burned, but almost all library cards and 2,000 children’s publications survived. After that, its own building was constructed with Andrew Carnegie’s money, and the library became not a temporary reading room, but a citywide system.

Today it is a network of branches across Seattle’s neighborhoods, while its main landmark is the 2004 Central Library, designed by OMA and Rem Koolhaas. That is why the place reads on two scales at once: as a public service that has spread throughout the city, and as a distinct contemporary building that has become the architectural symbol of that service.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare three types of library space. The Central Library is presented in the source as a “futuristic” structure and as the network’s main building; its very form shows that the library here does not hide behind a neutral facade, but declares itself as urban architecture. At the other pole are the six library buildings listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: they remind us that the network rests not on a single new image, but on different buildings from different eras.

It is also worth noting the technical features, because they change the idea of a library as a quiet warehouse of books. In one branch, as early as 1960, an escalator appeared, the first in a U.S. library, along with a fountain. The Ballard branch is described through its solar panels and “green roof.” And RFID book search shows that the library’s arrangement changed not only on the outside: the way a reader finds a book without a librarian’s help changed as well.