Seattle, Koolhaas

It took some time until I personally discovered Rem Koolhaas’ much praised library building,  this vast and cavernous building. It is rather forbidding on the outside, idiosynchratic with its relentless rhombs slanting this way and that. Bulky, big and sturdy like a dutch girl, yet not entirely without charme, especially once inside.(Well, better leave the analogy to the Dutch girl now). The hefty façade is bearing, of course, allowing large unsupported open spaces which give the library the flair of a convention center crossed with an airport terminal, representing the new aroma for a library in the 21^st century, less stuffy and less bourgeois. The thing is huge with the circulation scheme not all that clear, especially in the upper regions where the simple escalator scheme is abandoned for sloping floors and a book and media maze of sorts. I suppose the building has to grow on you and it has a lot of details and touches that would allow that to happen. Most attractively, it defies the simple architectural categories (like post modern, modern, traditional etc.) and creates its own paradigm, not inappropriate for a use that is so much in flux and in question as a library.