Libraries and Starchitects: Usage sometimes is overlooked

An employee staffs the temporary information booth at the downtown Central Library recently. People have found it difficult to navigate the impressive, $170 million building. (September 05, 2006). Credit: Karen Ducey/Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

From today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "New library can be a tough read: With people getting lost, professional is hired to create directional signs":

For all the architectural artistry of Rem Koolhaas' downtown Seattle library, there was just one little problem with the building: People kept getting lost inside.

Visitors would walk down the gently spiraling rows of books, following the Dewey Decimal System, and just past the section ranging from 0 (cassettes) to 0.196 (paranormal), they'd dead-end at a window.

"There was nothing telling them how to get out," Lynne Faulk said the other day, standing just inside the Fourth Avenue entrance to the gleaming, glass-sheathed building, which opened to critical raves in 2004. ...

Addison said the architects intended to give subtle clues to lead people through the library. For example, all the escalators going up are colored chartreuse. Of course, not everybody might see chartreuse and think "up." So Faulk suggested a sign pointing people to the escalator. Faulk agrees that all this seems pretty obvious. But she said signs are often given scant thought.

Index Keywords: libraries; urban-design-placemaking