Against Architects

I am bitter against architects ever since Building 43 opened. Celebrated by the architectural Metropolis magazine for innovative features such as walls made of unopenable doors. Annoying to me because it lacks sufficient conference rooms, and a quiet space to make a phone call. Ironically the building wastes space with pointless things like informal bookshelves. Bookshelves??!? We keep documents on the internet, thank you very much.

I was just watching a TED talk on the Seattle Central Library and got the creeping sensation that the architect didn't actually like libraries. Read the Wikipedia entry or just this excerpt:

The architects conceived the new Central Library building as a celebration of books, deciding after some research that despite the arrival of the 21st century and the "digital age," people still respond to books printed on paper. The architects also worked to make the library inviting to the public, rather than stuffy, which they discovered was the popular perception of libraries as a whole.

Although the library is an unusual shape from the outside, the architects' philosophy was to let the building's required functions dictate what it should look like, rather than imposing a structure making the functions conform to that.

For example, a major section of the building is the "Books Spiral," (designed to display the library's nonfiction collection without breaking up the Dewey Decimal System classification onto different floors or sections). The collection spirals up through four stories on a continuous series of shelves. This allows patrons to peruse the entire collection without using stairs or traveling to a different part of the building.

Good research guys! Because that's the point of the Dewey Decimal system, making it easy to linearly scan through every single book without all the bother of keeping a particular type of book in a particular place.

I find it hard to believe the function of a library dictates the form of a giant glass crystal. I find it easier to believe the main goal of an architect is some really cool looking powerpoint slides. They get their money before the actual users notice it takes O(n) time to find a book.