Rem Koolhaas [OMA] - Seattle Central Library

Seattle Central Library  
Rem Koolhas, OMA

The library represents, maybe with the prison, the last of the uncontested moral universes. The moral goodness of the library is intimately connected to the conceptual values of the book: the library is its fortress, librarians are its guardians… As new media emerge and gain currency, the library seems threatened, a fortress ready to be taken by a marauding hoard of technologies. In this fairytale, the electronic becomes barbaric. Its intangible, ominous ubiquity, its uncontrollable accessibility seems to represent a loss of order, tradition, civilization. In response, the language of the library has become moralistic and defensive. Its rhetoric proclaims a sense of superiority in mission, social responsibility, value…