Seattle Public Library - Koolhaas

During my grad school summer, I worked in a firm that shared office space with structural facade consulting firm Dewhurst Macfarlane. Tim Macfarlane is famous for doing glass calculations, glass structural testing, and developing glass structures (apple stores, time warner, seattle public library) and he happened to be teaching a structural seminar at my school. 

in the structural glass class, i developed an idea about post-tensioned laminated glass arch structures. macfarlane told me to look at gaudi’s funicular structure designs for sagrada familia to design the geometry of the arches. if you hang a series of weights on a cable, the cable will form a faceted shape based on pure tension forces. flip the shape of the cable upside down and you have the shape of a structure in pure compression forces. glass is incredibly strong in compression but weak in tension. to counter this weakness, i proposed to run tensioned cables within the glass arch to keep the structural forces in compression and resist bending. 

gaufi funicular studies

glass arch concept

Macfarlane's engineers were incredibly sharp. i befriended one facade consultant in particular, marc simmons, Before joining macfarlane, simmons trained under norm foster before putting up 30 facades in hong kong. during the summer of my internship, simmons was working on how to keep Koolhaas' faceted Seattle Public Library building geometry from leaking.

several years later, simmons would leave macfarlane to start his own facade consulting firm, Front. at a christmas party, i asked simmons if he ever talked to macfarlane since the split, he said no. macfarlane was bitter about the break up. he then proceeded to tell me a story where he and macfarlane were riding a plane back to nyc from Seattle. They played mental chess against each other. Both engineers could visualize boards in their head, remembering and updating all the moves in their mind, and calling out their moves verbally. "e2-e4, kf6, and so on..." Simmons told me it was an intense experience of dueling minds.

by far, the most influential building in my career has been the seattle public library. every project i've done professionally references their ideas developed by koolhaas, and future star architects bjarke ingels, dan wood, josh prince ramus.

1. The library is fun. The library can handle the variations of life. It’s not rigid. You can see different sculptures juxtaposed to graphics to structure to materials. 

2. The colors and textiles are like pop art

3. The detailing reinforces the ideas. Simple and sophisticated.

4. The graphic design (Bruce Mau) is fused with the architecture

5. The program is consolidated into functions contained in solids: children’s room, meeting rooms, book storage spiral, staff. Consolidation leads to optimization for function, clarity in organization, and space efficiency. The voids between the program are urban gathering spaces, spaces to read and relax (void spaces labeled in green in diagram below).

6. The circulation penetrates through spaces showing how they overlap

7. The structure is a gradient... where there are more forces, more I beams are incorporated in the facade

8. Torsion and earthquake design are ingeniously solved with triangulations of structure (almost space frame ala buckminster fuller)

9. The facade reflects the city in interesting angles... you see the movement of cars and people reflected in the glass overhangs

10. The material selection is an incredible palette of reflective, transparent, raw, playful. The facade is a gradient. Within the glass there’s a fine layer of mesh to diffuse the light. Where louvers are needed, the replace the glass panels.

11. Koolhaas was a film student before becoming an architect... you can see the choreography of the experience click here for a tour.