Keywords: Rem Koolhaas Seattle Public Library Joshua Ramus Adolf Loos Constant Nieuwenhuys
New Babylon Homo Ludens OMA Modernity MVRDV tranformable structures internal enclosing
flow of subjects platforms honeycomb structure form follows function extension of the city

Introduction

In this essay I will write about the new Seattle Public Library and its linkage to the critics of Modernity.
I will start with a short introduction on Rem Koolhaas. Who he is and what he experienced in his younger period. His encountering with the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys and his interpretation of New Babylon. The universities he enrolled in London and the United States. And in the end I will mention the founding of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and how it became a starting point for new young and energetic architects.

After this introduction I will continue by explaining the principles in the design of the new Seatlle Public Library. I will write about the challenges he had to face together with his OMA partner, Joshua Ramus. And how they managed to solve these challenges. I will explain their concept of ‘platforms’ and I will write about Koolhaas’s antipathy against multi‐storied libraries and office buildings.

At last I will search for a connection between the vision of Constant Nieuwenhuys on his New Babylon project and the vision of Koolhaas on the new Seattle Public Library. I also try to find out what Adolf Loos should have thought of Koolhaas building as a critic. By doing this I try to show a linkage between Koolhaas’s way of thinking and the vision from the critics of the Modernity.

Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas was born in 1944. His father was a journalist. At the age of eight he left the Netherlands together with his parents and lived in Jakarta, Indonesia until his twelfth. In the year 1956, Koolhaas and his family returned to the Netherlands. The young Koolhaas was shocked by the Dutch life in the typical Dutch city. Historically wealthy, small in scale, and well maintained, the Netherlands seemed like a living museum to him. Rem Koolhaas hated Holland. To this day the only city he likes is Rotterdam. Rotterdam was almost completely destructed during the second World War and was reconstructed, by using new urban design principles, in the 1950s. This is also the point where Koolhaas started an antipathy for homogeneous and tightly regulated urban configurations.

This antipathy grew when Koolhaas reached his twenties. At this time he worked as an film‐maker and a journalist. During this work he encountered the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys. Constant is best known as a Dutch artist, architect, a member of the Cobra‐group, and most important; by his New Babylon project. When Koolhaas met Constant, he had already been working on his New Babylon texts, sketches, paintings, and architectural models for years. The New Babylon project could be defined as a series of linked transformable structures, which sometimes have the size of a small city. These structures are lifted off the ground and are populated by Homo Ludens [1]. It is based on a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a life of creative play.

On one hand Koolhaas disliked the utopianism of New Babylon but on the other hand he liked the idea of the linked transformable structures, and the ever transforming city dominated by the creativity of its inhabitant. He also liked the visual aspect of New Babylon, for example the floor planes that are vertically pushed and pulled, the spaces that are defined by nice constructions instead of solid walls and the tension between the separate structures and the existing city. Koolhaas enrolled at the Architectural Association in London during the late 1960s. In 1972 he obtained a scholarship which enabled him to stay in the United States. Here he enrolled the Cornell University and later became a visiting fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York.

In 1975 he founded The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in London. He did this together with the architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and his own wife Madelon Vriesendorp. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas’s students, Zaha Hadid. Besides of its architectural designs, OMA is also known by its theoretical publications, like ‘Delirious New York’ [2] and ‘S,M,L,XL’ [3].

Nowadays Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture depends largely on energetic young architects, many of whom eventually leave the firm to start their own practices. The most recent example is Joshua Prince‐Ramus, who created the independent firm REX, with the help of OMA. Earlier examples are the Dutch MVRDV, the London‐based Zaha Hadid Architects and Foreign Office Architects, the Tokyo‐based SANAA, the Chicago‐based Studio Gang, and the New York‐based Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis. These firms differ from each other in many aspects but the main thoughts of OMA are retraceable in all of them.

Seattle Public Library

The new Seattle Public Library is the biggest project of Rem Koolhaas located in the United States. It needed to be different from any previously build public library. “For me it’s a building that accommodates both stability and instability,” Koolhaas says. “The things you can predict and the things you can’t.” By this he means that the library has to be designed in such a way that it is able to accommodate whatever new technologies and purposes it may have to serve in the future.

“The Library has been transformed from a space to read into a social center with multiple responsibilities. Each library today houses a proliferation of adjunct conditions that creates a conceptual imbalance: since its format has never been fundamentally adjusted to accommodate its new social role, the Library is like a host organism overwhelmed by its parasites.” [4]

For this project Koolhaas was joined by Joshua Ramus, an OMA partner who collaborated with him in the design of the building. They started with three months of research into libraries around the world and at the end of this research they found the two main challenges of the design. At first the ability of the library to adopt itself to the unpredictable future of new technologies. And at second the ability to serve new social functions. Both already predicted by Koolhaas in the statement in the first paragraph.

These challenges are mainly caused by the fact that all the contents of one whole library could be stored on a single chip, and the fact that a single library is able store the digital content of all libraries. These new possibilities of storage enables a part of the space taken by real books to be replaced by a new kind of reading ‘books’. Koolhaas sees the new Seattle Public Library as a showcase for new information, a place for thought, a place for discussion and reflection and a place of dynamic presence.

“Our first operation has been the ‘combing’ and consolidation of the apparently ungovernable proliferation of programs and media. By combining like with like, we have identified five platforms, each a programmatic cluster that is architecturally defined and equipped for maximum, dedicated performance. Because each platform is designed for a unique purpose, they are different in size, density, opacity.

The in‐between spaces are like trading floors where librarians inform and stimulate, where the interface between the different platforms is organized ‐ spaces for work, interaction, and play. (And reading).

By genetically modifiying the superposition of floors in the typical American hig‐rise, a building emerges that is a the same time sensitive (the slopes will admit unusual quantities of daylight where desirable), contextual (each side can react differently to specific urban conditions), iconic. Its angular facets form, with the folds of Gehry’s Experience Music Project, a plausible bracketing of Seattle’s new modernity.” [4]

To solve these challenges Koolhaas made a library that was organized as a series of five internal enclosed platforms. These platforms contain functions such as, meetings spaces, offices and parking. The difference to previous libraries is that the platform aren´t placed on top of each other which creates the typical high‐rise form. In this library the platforms are shifted, trusted for‐ and backwards. This composition of platforms causes the special form of the exterior. There are four open areas that alternate with the platforms. These serve the functions as for example, reading rooms, reference desks and a children’s library. The platforms give the sense of being suspended in midair. The largest and main platform is the one that holds the books. This platform is a continuous spiral of shelves from top to bottom. It is some sort of interior avenue for the people that visit the library. Instead of dividing the library by the subjects of the books, the main spiral holds the entire collection and creates a continuous flow of subjects. This encourages people to move freely along different subjects. It could be said that the visitor walks along the boulevard, and becomes some sort of flaneur that inspects the books and is being seduced by a world of information . The path of the visitor could be straightforward or more labyrinth‐like, it depends on the preferred route of the visitor. And as a matter of fact these platform also allow the disabled people to ‘walk’ easily trough the library. The composition of platforms is covered by a exterior that is just folded over it. In this building form really follows function. The exterior exists out of a honeycomb‐like structure that is made out of steel and glass. This structure also functions as a structural support, which reduces the need for columns in the interior. This makes it possible to make these large free spaces on the inside.

Coming back to the solution of the shifted and trusted platforms, Koolhaas once said; “There is a kind of sadness about the (traditional) multi‐storied library, it is simply divided into floors and each floor is more or less a random grouping of subjects, like humanities, whatever … (We wanted to) have a single, continuous experience, making individual floors almost mute, and that’s why we came up with a spiral.” This ‘sadness’ of multi‐storied libraries could be connected to his criticisms on the modern skyscraper: “The floors of skyscrapers separate people by company, by function. The strange or the banal can all occur on one floor without having any effect at all on another. It’s a giant shell containing thousands of people, yet the only thing that can possibly connect any of them is the elevator.” Koolhaas considers skyscrapers as vertical cylinders that isolate people from each other instead of putting them into circulation with one another. “It’s hypocritical for anyone to argue that skyscrapers are part of civil society and public space” Koolhaas wants the visitors of the Seattle Public Library to be watched and watch other visitors, almost like being on a stage. In other buildings, escalators, stairways and ramps are typically camouflaged or tucked away. In the Seattle Public Library Koolhaas brings them to the attention. He placed them centered and uses them to force people to interconnect.

The final result is a space that almost feels urban, like an extension of the city. According to a Seattle City Librarian the use of the library compared with the old building has grown by 60 percent.

The critics

What would be the answer of Constant if we asked him about his view on the new Seattle Public Library as a critic? I think he would have liked the way how Koolhaas dealt with the challenges of the ability of the library to adopt itself to the unpredictable future of new technologies and the ability to serve new social functions. The solution of the shifted and trusted platforms and the ability of change is something that to my opinion fitted perfectly in one of the New Babylon models. I think that the new Seattle Public Library could have been a part of the New Babylon structure. If Constant wanted a library inside New Babylon it would have pretty much looked the same as Koolhaas’s library. The library could be an element in New Babylon that allows the Home Ludens, or the man of creative play to acquire inspiration and information in a way that it broadens its perspective. The platforms could be expanded and replaced by functions that are possibly required in the future. The information and the experience is constantly changing. It is an architecture that would banish boredom: it’s no longer a cold and functional architecture but a flexible, constantly changing décor. [5]

Although Constant would have liked the way how the honeycomb‐like exterior creates the possibility of making large free spaces, he would have used it on a bigger scale. For example as an overall covering for his New Babylon project. By leaving this exterior coating of the library and applying it in a bigger sense he would have created more accessibility and a possibility to extend the library outside of its current boundaries. Is this linkage from the Seattle Public Library to New Babylon a coincidence or is it based on the influence of Constants work on Koolhaas in his younger years? That is something only Koolhaas knows.

Somebody of who I think also would have liked Koolhaas’s way of thinking is Adolf Loos. In the sense of a critic, not as an architect. According to Loos, architects who take their profession seriously will be sensitive to the historical background provided by old masters, while adapting their manner of building to contemporary requirements. There are enough ground for change, old crafts have vanished, technological advances make their demands, and functional requirements evolve over time. [6] Loos does not treat modernity as a new beginning, he sees modernity as a very specific continuation of the tradition. His vision towards modernity is a vision that could be connected with Koolhaas’s challenges. Koolhaas had the choice of making a common library with stacked floors and a separation of elements, or making a new type of library that fits the needs of todays technologies and social functions in an enclosed composition. As already mentioned before, he had chosen for the last solution. He respected the historical background of a library and edited it in such a way that it fits the contemporary requirements. As Loos said; “a very specific continuation of the tradition.” Another aspect, of what I think, fits in Loos’s way of thinking is the direct projection of the exterior on the interior platforms. This projection is strongly related to the phrase “form follows function”, which states that the shape of a building or object should be directly connected to its intended purpose. Exactly what Koolhaas has managed doing for the new Seattle Public Library.

To my opinion the New Seattle Public Library is an good example on how the library of the 21st century should look like. It is all about freedom and movement and it looks like an enduring piece of architecture. Somewhat like an monument which announces a new method of building libraries and leaves the old method behind. I think that if Picasso ever had painted a library it looked like this.

References

  1. “Homo Ludens “ by Johan Huizinga (1938)
  2. “Delirious New York, a retroactive manifesto” by OMA (1978)
  3. “OMA: S,M,L,XL”by OMA (1995)
  4. “Seattle Public Library, proposal” by OMA/LMN (1999)
  5. “Architecture and Modernity” by Hilde Heyen (1999) – p. 152
  6. “Architecture and Modernity” by Hilde Heyen (1999) – p. 179

 

Internet resources

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