How Buildings Learn: Seattle Public Library
Central Library, Seattle, USA (Rem Koolhaas, OMA)
How does a public library cope in a digital age? How does a physical space handle a virtual classification system such as the Dewey Decimal system, and continuously changing needs?
In the Seattle Public Library’s Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA, books stacks run in a spiral space AKA The Book Spiral (very cool diagram), with removable numbers in the floor so that the library is flexible enough to “learn” and adapt to new needs.
The library embodies many other noteworthy principles that you can find in OMA’s original 1999 concept book for the library.
It’s a space that exemplifies Stewart Brand‘s notion of “How Buildings Learn”.
