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Not Yet Built / AWARD OF MERIT: SEATTLE CENTRAL PUBLIC LIBRARY , LMN Architects for OMA/LMN A Joint Venture; Ove Arup, structural, mechanical, electrical & plumbing; Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire, structural & civil; Robert Pielow & Associates, code; HKA Consulting, vertical transportation; McGuire Associates, ADA accessibility; Davis Langdon Adamson, cost estimating; Inside Outside, landscape, interiors; Bruce Mau Design, graphics; Kugler Tillotson Associates, lighting. General contractor: Hoffman Construction Company. (Photography by Lara Swimmer, Swimmer Photography) An ambitious program, a deep inquiry into the nature of a library expanding as a social space beyond a mere repository. IF you can pull it off, you’ll have three programmatic areas held together beneath a kind of stocking, an elastic membrane like a bank robber’s mask. A deliberate and skillful provocation, successfully outrageous to us today, “an urban Oreck” that sucks people in on all four sides, a big public square promoting human fusion and knowledge-building. |