World-renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, 2000 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate and designer of Seattle's exciting new downtown library, will discuss his current projects at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 11 at the University of Washington, Kane Hall, Room 130. There will be an opportunity for the public to ask questions.
"Late Evening with Rem Koolhaas" is being presented as part of Praxis@CAUP - the Lecture Series of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Washington. It is the annual Callison Lecture. The program is free and everyone is welcome.
Koolhaas, principal and founder of The Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will show slides of his work, including Seattle's dramatic new Central Library, now under construction at 1000 Fourth Ave. The 362,987-square-foot Central Library was designed by OMA in a joint venture with Seattle-based LMN Architects. The building is scheduled to open in late 2003.
The new Library features 10 floors that span five main "platforms" or levels that are designated for primary library functions. Between the platforms are areas that appear to float. These in-between spaces will house public uses, such as a large and imaginative children's area and a socially interactive space called the "living room." The structure's exterior will consist of insulated glass panels that enclose an aluminum mesh layer, creating soft interior light to enhance reading areas and protect against heat and glare.
The building will a feature a revolutionary system for accessing the collection, called a "book spiral." The gently sloping spiral winds through four floors of book stacks. The innovative design means the Library can increase its non-fiction collection without disrupting the Dewey Decimal system-based order of the collection. This disruption is a challenge in the traditional design of libraries. Currently, when collections grow beyond their space allotments, they must be broken up and isolated on separate floors. The book spiral will give readers unprecedented access to the Library's non-fiction collection.
Voters approved the new library as part of the $196.4 million "Libraries for All" bond measure passed in 1998. In addition to the new Central Library, the plan also calls for improving or replacing all 22 branch libraries and building five new branch libraries. For more information, visit the Library's Web site at www.spl.org.
Other Koolhaas projects under way include commissions from the Samsung Corporation Centre for Social Studies, Museum of Korean Art and Seoul National University Museum in Korea; a master plan for Universal Studios in Los Angeles; a master plan for the City Centre of Almere, Netherlands; a master plan for the Hanoi New Town in Vietnam; the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin; a master plan for the Song Do New Town for Inchon, Korea; and the new McCormick Tribune Campus Centre for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Among OMA's recently completed projects are the Educatorium, a lecture hall for the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Maison a Bordeaux in France, hailed by Time magazine as best design of 1998. Koolhaas also is a Harvard University professor.
For more information about OMA and Koolhaas, visit the following pages on the Library's Web site: http://www.spl.org/lfa/central/oma/koolhaas.html and http://www.spl.org/lfa/central/oma/oma.html.
For more information about "Late Evening With Rem Koolhaas," contact the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning at: 206-616-2441, or visit http://www.caup.washington.edu/praxis.
(For more information, call Vikram Prakash, associate dean for external affairs at the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 206-616-9091, vprakash@u.washington.edu, or Andra Addison, communications director, at 206-386-4103, or andra.addison@spl.org.)
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Content modified: 4 April 2002
12/30/2005
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