WE’LL RUN LOTSA LIBRARY PIX over the course of the week. Be prepared.
It was a glorious day inside and out. Everyone seemed truly joyous; as if this magnificent cathedral of popular learning would herald a brighter future for our troubled region.
Seattle’s been called both a “city of readers†and a “city of engineers.†The new Seattle Public Library’s primarily a feat of stunning engineering, and secondly a tribute to reading and to the imagination.
More importantly, out of all the fancy-schmancy new PoMo monuments in this town, it’s the one that’s open to the public every week of the year with no cover charge.
(Now, if the city’d only commit enough funds to properly run the place…)
Head Librarian Deborah Jacobs (like me, a onetime Corvallis-ite), the mayor, and most of the City Council were on hand at the opening, along with several drum ensembles.
Welcoming patrons from inside the Fifth Avenue entrance: Everyone’s favorite Action Librarian, Nancy Pearl.
The sign adjacent to Pearl reveals:
(1) The Koolhaas team’s penchant for bold colors, especially chartreuse (named for a liqueur invented by “Chartist” monks, and hence perfectly appropriate for a contemplative place), and
(2) The team’s choice of Futura Extra Bold as the library’s official typeface. You can tell near the top left corner of this page that I’m also a Futura fan. More significantly, it was the official typeface of the Sub Pop Singles Club, which probably led the Dutch designers to think of it as a “Seattle” font.
I was elated to see the “writers’ room” near the top of the building’s co-named for our ol’ pal Carlo Scandiuzzi, who booked rock shows at the Showbox before becoming a movie actor-producer, and member of assorted local arts/humanities boards.
The children’s area is vast, raucously noisy, and right on the ground floor. It’s got lotsa large, angular concrete posts, which may remind some oldsters of past fun times at the Kingdome or the Coliseum. It’s got games, toys, fun props, kid-sized computer desks and chairs, and a semi-hidden “story hour room.”
One person I met compared the vast interior to a set from a Jacques Tati film. I was thinking more sci-fi. Indeed, it’ll be hard for Paul Allen’s new Science Fiction Museum to look more science-fictiony than parts of the library.
