The OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) commissioned Quinze & Milan to furnish the Seattle Public Library. The Seattle Public Library is the public library system serving Seattle, Washington, USA. It was officially established by the city in 1890, though there had been efforts to start a Seattle library as early as 1868. Situated on a sloping site between 4th and 5th street the new library will have entrances on both street levels.
The Seattle Public Library also founded, and until July 2008 administered, the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library. The building is divided into eight horizontal layers, each varying in size to fit its function. A structural steel and glass skin unifies the multifaceted form and defines the public spaces in-between. Rows of escalators lead to the 5th Street “Living Room” lobby located under a 50-foot-high sloping glass wall. The lobby can also be reached directly from a covered walkway than runs the length of the 5th Avenue facade. The library’s various programs are intuitively arranged across five platforms and four flowing “in between” planes, which together dictate the building’s distinctive faceted shape, offering the city an inspiring building that is robust in both its elegance and its logic. The carpeted “Living Room” contains the fiction stacks while non-fiction are located on the “Dewey Ramp”; a four-story ramp that allows people to browse through books in a continuos sequence. The Reading room, on the top floor, has views of Puget Sound and the surrounding mountains.
Summer is a great time to visit Seattle. If you catch the city on one of its rainier days, swing by the Seattle Central Library, located right in downtown. Sure, libraries don’t make it onto many top five must-see lists for other cities, but this library is different. Not only is the building architecturally significant, it offers neon escalators, glass elevator shafts, brilliant red hallways and four-story circular book stacks connected by ramps making it a fun and engaging place to explore. Add the fact that it also offers free Wi-Fi, an enormous children’s section and a coffee shop in the building — what’s not to love?
