Seattle's new meat locker.
May. 27th, 2004 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsKouryou-chan and I went to the new Seattle Public Library yesterday evening while we waited for Omaha to get through a one-hour appointment of some import. The library has been getting some rave reviews recently, with the New Yorker calling it "The first adult building of our century," the LA Times saying, "The stacks, arranged along a continuous spiral ramp contained with a four-story slab, reinforce a sense of a world organized with machine-like precision." And the librarian herself gushes, "The design runs counter to the traditional notion of a library as a place devoted solely to books."
Stick Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" on your iPod and prepare yourself. This is an ugly building. Unfriendly in so many ways. The first hint comes from the elevators, which are limelight green and give everyone riding them the sallow glow of background actors from THX-1138. The building itself is a massive frame of steel and glass in a weird, dissonant honeycomb pattern that envelops an interior tower called "The spiral." The outer walls of the spiral are mostly glass looking down into this massive space below where the public congregates, the 5th Avenue floor. From that floor looking up I felt oppressed by the overarching impression of metal, like being inside a dome from Logan's Run without the hedonism or warmth.
The spiral itself is a terrible mistake. The "spiral ramp contained within a four-story slab" seems more disorganized than it is because it's broken over and over by little attempts to humanize the space, attempts which mostly fail. The spiral idea disrupts the human sense of place; we have learned to think in terms of buildings with unique levels, "floors," and to take that out completely by sloping the physical floors upwards and downwards as one browses the shelves disturbs that habit of thought. And that "slab" seems to hover there in space-- despite the massive cross-girders evidenced at the turns of the spiral, I kept questioning what holds the slab up-- not a reassuring thought.
The 5th Avenue floor has been showcased in lots of newspaper photographs-- neat, pretty, well-lit, with public seating spaces and plenty of computers. All of the photographs were taken when the sun was shining through the glass. On a rainy day like yesterday-- and Seattle has plenty of rainy days-- the lighting was inadquate, the space gloomy, the area under the slab dim. Yet because it's the floor that looks up on the vaulted enclosure it somehow manages to be uncomfortable to agoraphobics and claustrophobics alike. All that exposed glass, already covered with sticky children's pawprints, must me a maintenence nightmare. And the escalators manage to combine the worst of airport sensibilities with creepy Disney-gone-horribly-wrong permanent multimedia "exhibits". The floor is stainless steel plate held down with machine screws.
Human beings in large groups are actually pretty predictable. What they like and don't like has been studied and restudied. People don't like disorienting geometries. They like warm colors. They don't like feeling lost. They do like their caves to both feel encapsulating and egressable. Not one of these commonplace memes resides in the Seattle Public Library. The place is vast yet feels constricted, mechanistic yet feels imprecise. The exposed framework, meant to convey strength, does the opposite. The lighting is poorly chosen for the local climate. The infrastructure for getting people from one place to another is inefficient, and the glass enclosures for the elevators can only serve to make children scared to get on the things. It is a warehouse for books through which people can browse-- and for $170 million dollars, it was too overpriced. It's fad architecture-- looks amazing at first glance, but completely lacks the humane qualities all good buildings have.
Kouryou-chan and I went to the kid's section, which was the only part really made for human beings: friendly colors and good lighting predominated. She didn't want to read books or even play on the computers; she wanted to play with the other kids there and the stuffed animals strewn about the reading space. Good for her. We left after about half an hour there and headed out to pick up Omaha.
There wasn't much food at home, so I scrounged up a jar of vegetable broth concentrate, some Aborio rice, and some vegetables, and made a really delicious vegetarian risotto. Mmmm... carbs. Kinda hankered for some pancetta in there, but I can live: omaha prefers without. Comfort food for sure. And enough leftover for one or two lunches. We had dessert-- cookies for Omaha and me, a popsicle for Kouryou-chan. Kouryou-chan and I read Fox in Sock together, and then it was time for her to go to bed. She was pretty good about it, too.
I finished Tron. Well, okay. I "finished" it in the sense that I reached the final boss level, but I have doubts that I'll be interested in defeating the "boss" so much that I'll actually bother. Pretty good. The last "big fight" in the force-field generator room was much more fun than any of the boss levels.
Stick Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" on your iPod and prepare yourself. This is an ugly building. Unfriendly in so many ways. The first hint comes from the elevators, which are limelight green and give everyone riding them the sallow glow of background actors from THX-1138. The building itself is a massive frame of steel and glass in a weird, dissonant honeycomb pattern that envelops an interior tower called "The spiral." The outer walls of the spiral are mostly glass looking down into this massive space below where the public congregates, the 5th Avenue floor. From that floor looking up I felt oppressed by the overarching impression of metal, like being inside a dome from Logan's Run without the hedonism or warmth.
The spiral itself is a terrible mistake. The "spiral ramp contained within a four-story slab" seems more disorganized than it is because it's broken over and over by little attempts to humanize the space, attempts which mostly fail. The spiral idea disrupts the human sense of place; we have learned to think in terms of buildings with unique levels, "floors," and to take that out completely by sloping the physical floors upwards and downwards as one browses the shelves disturbs that habit of thought. And that "slab" seems to hover there in space-- despite the massive cross-girders evidenced at the turns of the spiral, I kept questioning what holds the slab up-- not a reassuring thought.
The 5th Avenue floor has been showcased in lots of newspaper photographs-- neat, pretty, well-lit, with public seating spaces and plenty of computers. All of the photographs were taken when the sun was shining through the glass. On a rainy day like yesterday-- and Seattle has plenty of rainy days-- the lighting was inadquate, the space gloomy, the area under the slab dim. Yet because it's the floor that looks up on the vaulted enclosure it somehow manages to be uncomfortable to agoraphobics and claustrophobics alike. All that exposed glass, already covered with sticky children's pawprints, must me a maintenence nightmare. And the escalators manage to combine the worst of airport sensibilities with creepy Disney-gone-horribly-wrong permanent multimedia "exhibits". The floor is stainless steel plate held down with machine screws.
Human beings in large groups are actually pretty predictable. What they like and don't like has been studied and restudied. People don't like disorienting geometries. They like warm colors. They don't like feeling lost. They do like their caves to both feel encapsulating and egressable. Not one of these commonplace memes resides in the Seattle Public Library. The place is vast yet feels constricted, mechanistic yet feels imprecise. The exposed framework, meant to convey strength, does the opposite. The lighting is poorly chosen for the local climate. The infrastructure for getting people from one place to another is inefficient, and the glass enclosures for the elevators can only serve to make children scared to get on the things. It is a warehouse for books through which people can browse-- and for $170 million dollars, it was too overpriced. It's fad architecture-- looks amazing at first glance, but completely lacks the humane qualities all good buildings have.
Kouryou-chan and I went to the kid's section, which was the only part really made for human beings: friendly colors and good lighting predominated. She didn't want to read books or even play on the computers; she wanted to play with the other kids there and the stuffed animals strewn about the reading space. Good for her. We left after about half an hour there and headed out to pick up Omaha.
There wasn't much food at home, so I scrounged up a jar of vegetable broth concentrate, some Aborio rice, and some vegetables, and made a really delicious vegetarian risotto. Mmmm... carbs. Kinda hankered for some pancetta in there, but I can live: omaha prefers without. Comfort food for sure. And enough leftover for one or two lunches. We had dessert-- cookies for Omaha and me, a popsicle for Kouryou-chan. Kouryou-chan and I read Fox in Sock together, and then it was time for her to go to bed. She was pretty good about it, too.
I finished Tron. Well, okay. I "finished" it in the sense that I reached the final boss level, but I have doubts that I'll be interested in defeating the "boss" so much that I'll actually bother. Pretty good. The last "big fight" in the force-field generator room was much more fun than any of the boss levels.
