The Seattle Public Library board of trustees has unanimously and enthusiastically selected the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, to design the city's new 355,000-square-foot, $156 million downtown library. The five-member board made its decision before a standing-room only crowd at a special meeting at 4 p.m. today (May 26), at the Central Library.
OMA, which will partner locally with LMN Architects in Seattle, rose to the top from an original pool of 29 renowned local, national and international architect firms who sought the job. The board had recently narrowed the list to two firms - OMA and Steven Holl Architects, based in New York. Both have designed buildings influential on the direction of modern architecture.
Seattle voters approved a $196.4 million bond measure to renovate and expand its entire system in November. In February, the Library began the process to find an architect to design the new central library. More than 1,700 people turned out for public presentations by the finalists.
Board members said they came to a consensus on OMA after viewing major projects by the firm, whose principal is Rem Koolhaas.
Betty Jane Narver, Library Board president, said there was "a definite sense of wonderment and excitement" inside the buildings designed by OMA. "The spaces were fun and interesting to be in."
Library Board Vice President Gordon McHenry noticed "a tremendous amount of creativity" in OMA projects developed under tight budgets. "They also felt like successful buildings that would withstand the test of time."
City Librarian Deborah L. Jacobs said she was particularly impressed with Koolhaas' "ability to think about what libraries will become in the future" and his commitment to public process. She added that the board "sensed a lot of excitement in the challenge of the project by OMA. We are all thrilled about the choice. Together, we will create a splendid new home for the central library - one that belongs at the heart of a great city." Koolhaas lives in London and teaches at Harvard University's graduate School of Design where he is revered as a "thinking" architect who also builds. His background includes a Harknesss Fellowship for research in the United States in 1992. He studied with O.M. Ungers at Cornell University from 1972 to 1973 and then became a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies at New York.
OMA was founded in London in 1975. It is composed of an international team of 59 architects, urban planners, landscape architects, computer technicians and administrative staff. English is the official language of the office. In 1978, OMA won a competition to extend the Dutch Parliament Building, which drew international attention. The same year, Koolhaas, a former screenwriter and journalist, wrote "Delirious in New York," heralded as a classic text on modern architecture and society. In 1980, with a commission for the Netherlands Dance Theater in The Hague, OMA moved to The Netherlands. Since then, Rotterdam has remained OMA's base with satellite offices in Lille and Hong Kong for its projects throughout Europe, Asia and North America.
The 55-year-old Dutch architect was the urban planner for the new city center of Lille, France and designer of Lille's Grand Palais, completed in 1994. The Grand Palais includes a convention center, auditoriums, exhibition halls and a concert hall. He designed Kunsthal in 1992, a 65,000-square-foot museum in Rotterdam and the 102,000-square-foot Educatorium in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in 1997.
Koolhaas designed a house for a client in a wheelchair in Bordeaux, France, last year. A platform, rather than an elevator, rises through the home, changing the character of each floor as it goes. The house was cited in Time magazine's The Best of 1998 as "the best house in the world, ever." This year, he transformed a former bank into a 296-seat off-Broadway theater in New York.
OMA currently has two projects under way in the United States: a new student center at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a 750,000 square foot headquarters building in Los Angeles. OMA recently won several international competitions, including the master plan of Song-Do New Town in Inchon, Korea, and the Haus um die Schenkung for the Anthroposophic Society in Berlin, Germany.
Jacobs said Koolhaas is looking forward to working with the Library to involve staff and the public in the design of the new central library. The new central library, which will be constructed at the existing site at 1000 4th Ave., is scheduled to open in 2003. Construction is expected to get under way next summer.
(For more information, call Andra Addison, public information officer, at 206-386-4103.)
Short list of Architects includes contact information for finalist firms
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Content modified: 8 June 1999
12/30/2005
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