i have no real opinions on the library, but i hate the over-processed hdr pictures of it that you used.

@58
My daughter and partner and I use it almost everyday. It functions absolutely beautifully, thank to all the productive input from the community. Maybe if Charles had a beautiful library like this near his home growing up he would have become a real writer or a real somebody who does positive work in the world instead of tearing down anything other people love except him. Might have taken more than that to fix his sorry soul however.

To counter the monumental pretentiousness of this sad excuse for journalism I have one thing to say....... PENIS FART

Well, at least they didn't get a brick box like we have in Skyway.

If you look a gift horse in the mouth I hope it bites your face.

it's almost $500 a SF, and this is outrageous. a library should be less per SF than, say, a condo building. condos are "denser" with more kitchens, baths, etc. a library includes lots of ...just space. sure it needs to be finished. and it needs walls and such. but really, $500 a SF is like outrageous, I guess the city has tons of money to throw around like a drunken sailor these days.

then, it's a meaningless melange piece of crap, architecture wise, it's in the current school of thought which seems to be "for gosh sakes make sure it looks nothing like a traditional building! put together random swoopy shapes, that way we can get the per SF cost up higher! and justify a total architecture bill that's higher, too!"

there's nothing wrong with the traditional entry of rising broad steps, normal reading rooms with high windows, just a normal design, and yes it could have been copied from 1,000 other library designs to hold costs down. But no, we need architecture that makes a statement, though no one can figure out what it is. To show we "value making statements!" or some such crap. In seattle this usually means something with timber, or a reference to a salmon or a boat, but in the end, it's a BUILDING and it's not a fishing boat or any kind of boat and it's not a stream (see: city hall) and there's more to seattle than boats nad salmon anyway and good god, why not a building that just ....looks like one and....looks good and ....creates some sense of public awe the way a traditional public library does? instead of ugly concrete block gray walls, like we need more gray, swoopy shapes that mean nothing and won't be replicated by anyone in any pattern language anywhere. it's just babble is what this building's pattern language is. I wouldn't use the panama hat analogy, id's say it's like when White Peope buy some Putamayo album with all kinds of foreign language chanting on it and it turns out none of it is a real language anyway it was all faked for the white guy with the recorder.

preaching hate?

I think you're just a douche.

Mr. Mudede is so blinded by "THE NARRATIVE" it's hilarious. Everything he encounters is shoehorned into a predetermined framework. Open your eyes you dumb commie.

This is a fucking brilliant article. I've read some things that Charles has written that I didn't get or I thought were off, but this is incredible. Also incredible: the ridiculous comments. Anyone else get the feeling that everyone who's pissed is white?

'jeez, it's just a BUILDING. Stop PROJECTING on it.' How dense can you fucking get? Anyone else headdesking at all of the comments that start off with "well I'M white, but MY opinion on the minority experience is more valid than yours because..."Awesome article, Charles.

yup - our art and buildings suck. "the unusual juxtaposing of things that artists do to make you open your mind a little wider"is the pat answer, so lazy, it justifies anything no matter how crappy; it denies that quality exists. So yahoo. so in seattle we see these constant references to the sea. a fish tale on a light rail pole, or a salmon. woo hoo. it's like the public art of schoolchildren who paint murals; once you've seen oh about 12 primitivist pieces, um, you've seen them all - you don't really want an entire city of them. ditto with the express references to salmon, boats, ships, vikings, salmon streams bubbling through city hall, do we not realize that MOST major cities are on the sea? or are connected or were connected to the world through...ships? hello, yes boston does not have cod artwork on every bridge and we'd think it silly if they did. but no, in seattle, anything quirky goes, another way of saying "we're not confident or intellingent enough to know true quality when we see it; artists and architects must not be questioned or else we would have to actually defend them." so much pitiable public art from bergen place monstrosities of mushroom bubbles on what look like telephone poles (an hommage to what, piers?) to fish shapes on the ballard bridge. it's just childish. our buildings look like a random jusxtaposition of swoopy shapes, with the pattern language being "babble" ....there's no particular reason for this degree of curve here and that there, only that we're goddamed if we're going to put a golden rectangle into anything anymore. and this library monstrosity at $500 per sqaure foot? what? just copy a greenlake library. really. broad steps and a big entrance facade speaks "hello, I am a welcoming public building. reading is importnat" then some rooms with big windows. really, it's not rocke tscience to manage the flow and use and functions and we need to stop celebrating architects who are said to somehow master functions without art. or with what it a "the unusual juxtaposing of things that artists do to make you open your mind a little wider" which is simply another way of saying "I don't know what art is; I don't know what beauty is; I don't know what grace and charm are in a buliding." if you want unusual juxtapositions you will find lots in the landfill. really unusual juxtapositions. but just piling together random shapes is not architecture, though it is what we call architecture today, sadly.

Immigrants are often 'white' and non- immigrants (that are classified as 'white' in this article, Americans established here for generations are often black, or other non white colors...

America is not just 'whites' and 'immigrants'.

part of the problem of the writer's initial analogy (guy grabbing the hat) is that even though such attitudes exist (and the attitudes exist amongst people from many cultural backgrounds)... Mudede seems like he assumes the readers are mostly from a similar, narrow cultural range. Also, it just doesn't match what's going on with the library architecture either.

Have never been to the Beacon Hill branch (I'm a black person living in Fremont - de libertas quirkas!) but now I want to go. The article is thought provoking, puts its finger on a true and real phenomenon. Will BHL *feel* as hollow to me as it does to him? I don't know yet. But those who argue that a building is just a building and is devoid of cultural context - that must be an interesting way to move through the world! As a lover of art and architecture - yes, I walk down the streets taking photos of random buildings and reading guide books - and wannabe member of Seattle Historical Society - this is exactly the kind of discussion people ought to be having about our neighborhoods and (especially contemporary) art.

Architectural firms are quick to tell you what their designs are designed to make the occupant/patron/passerby feel. Okay. But what do you actually feel? And if you feel nothing at all about it, that says something, too.

Terrible and whiny. I cringed reading this just as the observer cringed on the boy stealing the hat.