Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas

Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas
Standing out on the Seattle skyline, the new library lives inside a monolithic, compact volume, like a wedge, but multi-faceted and open to the city and its flows.

"We wanted to create a sense of moving between urban spaces and not spaces in a building", says Joshua Ramus, who works with Koolhaas.

Composed of three strips, starting at one of the block's four corners and proceeding from top to bottom, first a part with a design like that of a Doric capital, then another which is perfectly vertical like the shaft of a column, and, lastly, a truncated pyramid like a base.

The base rests on street level on three sides, and is detached, as if opening up toward the road and inviting people inside, along the entrance fa�ade.

But the building's proportions do not bring to mind other references to classical architecture, and what's more, as soon as one turns the corner, all such associations dissolve, as volumes here are organised in a completely different, more nervous, plastic way, only apparently random.

The library is built on eight levels, linked by a series of escalators.

The library's internal organisation revolutionises the traditional concept of the library: it becomes a city space, a cell in the urban organism, an indoor piazza frequented not only by students but by passers-by, who can go to