- I'm Stephen Chung.

And I'm an architect and a teacher.

On each episode of Cool Spaces!, I will deconstruct the world of architecture.

I'll show you some great buildings, how they were designed, and just what makes them so cool.

What does it take to make a cool space for books and technology?

We'll take you to the high-tech library at North Carolina State University, inside a partnership between community and community college in Phoenix, and visit a landmark in Seattle that has set the standard for contemporary libraries.

Libraries, on this episode of Cool Spaces!

- Whether it's a university library or a public library, the digital age has made information easy to access online.

With everything in a computer or in the cloud, do we even a need a storehouse of books?

And if a library's primary reason for being isn't books, how will architects define and design the next generation of libraries?

This is the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State.

Located in Raleigh, it's a collaborative setting for companies, research and development, and college students.

- If you saw a picture of Centennial Campus in 1987, there was nothing here, and you would think, "They can't do this.

"Where are they going to get the money?

How are they going to do this?"

But I believed.

And so we saw an opportunity to make this available to everyone on campus, free, 24 hours a day.

- Let me ask you a question.

Where is the circulation desk?

- Kind of here.

This is our circulation and tech lending reference desk kind of all in one.

The James B.

Hunt Library at North Carolina State University was designed for students in science, engineering, and technology.

The library has its share of traditional books, but it also exploits a variety of new technologies like never before.

So what else can I get here?

- You can get tablets, different kind of laptops.

- I can sign these out?

- Yes.

- Other laptops.

- Laptop.

- Different kinds of circuit boards.

- Circuit boards?

I have no idea what it is, but I'll take it.

- Okay.

- This doesn't mean you can't get books.

So what do they call this?

- So this is the Hunt Library bookBot.

- And how does it work?

- So it works--all the books are stored in bins, they're stored randomly except for by their height.

And people request books out of it, and we deliver it to them.

- How about something on design and technology?

- All right, let me look that up.

- Instead of bookshelves, you get something that looks more like a scene out of a sci-fi movie.

- All right, so look through here, and... - You got it.

- Here's your book.

- Design and Technology.

- It used to be thought of in the past that libraries were places where you should be very, very quiet and you shouldn't touch or move anything.

In this library, we want people to come in and immediately feel energized to do something.

- The existing buildings to the north part of the oval here on Centennial Campus are all brick, which is the traditional construction on the campus.

And they said, "We want something really iconic."

And you can't do something really iconic with another brick building.

So our challenge was to-- not necessarily not to use brick, but our challenge was to create a narrative that the rest of the campus appreciated and really wanted.

- The inspiration for the Hunt Library comes from North Carolina's history of working with textiles.

Images of weaving made their way into the design.

Like the threads on a loom, Craig Dykers wanted to weave the building into the surrounding landscape.

- If you take a piece of rope-- for example, a simple piece of rope like this--it is, in a sense, woven because there are multiple strands, but it's kind of weak.

It won't hold itself up.

But if you take the same piece of rope and apply it into a kind of a weave, several strands of rope, when woven together, you see they become very strong.

- The architecture firm Snohetta was chosen in part because of the collaborative nature of their office.

Here, for example, architects worked side by side with landscape designers.

So your work, it seems that nature plays an inspiration in some of the things that you are doing.

- Yeah, well, you know, everything that we build comes from somewhere on this Earth, and if you're building a stone building, there's a field somewhere that has a hole in the ground where those stones were taken from.

We like to draw your mind back to those places from time to time because the world is rather wonderful and natural.

- What's the idea behind this space?

- Well, right now we're standing in the uppermost level of the library.

It's the highest point in the building, and we call it the skyline reading lounge because it's raised up into the sky, almost, and it looks off to the valley into Lake Raleigh, which is very near to the library.

The landscape is very unique in the fact that there's a lake and it rises up slowly to this hill.

Rather than simply making a kind of block of a building and placing it here, we thought to weave the building into the landscape so that, essentially, we've extended the building and the landscape into one flowing movement, and when you're standing in this spot where we are now, that sort of weaving structure gives you a view off to the lake.

- The Hunt Library is on a new part of the campus, and it's part of a new master plan which revolves around this oval space, which is a quad.

Now, the buildings are there.

The fronts of the buildings are sort of shaped to reinforce that shape of the quad.

Now, the site is over here.

Another architect, I suspect, might shape their building to do something similar as this one or these and maybe have a curved front, something like that.

And maybe the building would look something like this.

And the way that these entrances on the other buildings are, they're sort of aligned across the quad like that, and maybe as a result, the entrance would be right there.

So that's what Snohetta did, right?

No.

What they did was push part of their building into the space of the oval, and that's their building right there.

And as you can see, it's pinching that oval right there.

And what that does is create this little inflection.

That inflection is how people enter into the site, and they do so in an eccentric way, which is very different than these other buildings.

And also by pushing the building off to the side like this, now everyone in the quad gets this framed view of the lake beyond.

Now, they could have made their building an anchor to the quad and lined it up with the other buildings, but Snohetta was given the task to create something more dynamic and progressive, and for that, they had to break the rules.

- Fins, or what Snohetta calls solar blades, cover the two longest sides of the building.

They make the building look like it's shimmering, like ripples in the ocean.

Is this a good indication here of the weaving?

- Yeah, this is a really good indication of the weaving.

You see the solar blades are beginning to pull some of the strands of the building apart, and also back together.

So here you see the very top floor starts to peel away from the rest of the project.

The solar blades dip down just above one of the main entries of the building here.

So all these things really start to come together right in this point.

- It's neat to see these fins up close.

This is where you can see the different dimensions.

So I thought it was all white, but really what we're looking at is a darker gray, a middle gray, and it just begins to slowly become more and more light.

- That's right.

And to blend the colors together and so it's not so distinctive a dark gray, a medium gray, and a light gray, the solar blades and the metal panels behind actually change colors in different locations.

- Why did the windows start low and begin to expand like this?

- Down here where the windows touch the ground, that's where you enter the building.

And as you move along this wall, you'll notice that the windows sort of rise and lift off ground.

- But why not make them horizontal?

- If the blades were horizontal, the sunlight would simply penetrate through and actually come into the building.

So by having them in the vertical orientation as the sun moves south in this direction, it actually blocks the light better.

We studied a lot of different shapes, and we arrived at this sort of airfoil.

It looks almost like an airplane wing.

And what that does is, it diffuses the light in different directions, and it sort of creates this wonderful glowing effect.

- As modern as this library is, the design is actually influenced by ancient Greek architecture, long open buildings with a freestanding colonnade or covered walkway.

- It's a very long space, and somewhat surprisingly long to some people.

And that was a very deliberate idea that we had.

We wanted to create a place that allowed you to move freely and see the various rooms and functions of the building as you approach to the entrance.

But also, very interestingly, it is in a way modeled after great libraries of the past, the ancient agoras and stoas of ancient Greece, which were these very narrow, long rooms that allowed people to move and walk freely and discuss their ideas and thoughts as they used and interacted with the libraries themselves.

- So it's super modern, but at the same time, still looking to the past for its inspiration.

Now, in a big building like this one, you could easily get lost.

One way to navigate is to use a map.

The other way is to simply look to the color.

Yellow means stairs.

Dark blue, elevators.

Red, gathering spaces.

And the restrooms, orange.

This space is supposed to encourage interaction.

Someone you haven't met before might sit down nearby.

And you might start to talk.

You share what you're working on.

It's the opposite of traditional libraries where everyone's supposed to be quiet.

What did you want to happen in this space?

- Well, just as you enter the library into this great reading room, this is the first place where you can sort of stop, take a break.

Plus, you might run into somebody.

It's a voyage of discovery.

You get to the top of this stair, and you think, "Well, here I am," and then you turn and you see yet another very similar stair of the same color leading to another floor, and you go to the top of that.

It's like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz.

- You can see everywhere in the building from almost any spot.

And, you know, students like to see and be seen, and, you know, that really works.

It's unique.

It's unique on this campus.

- But you wanted that?

- It's unique in the world.

Yes.

- Snohetta brought their unique design approach to public spaces to one of the most sensitive spaces in America.

This is the memorial site for September 11th and also the World Trade Center bombings in 1993.

- The building is essentially the entrance pavilion for a much larger museum that is below our feet.

So as you walk to the memorial, which are these wonderful pools that are cut into the earth, cut down into the ground, those look towards the past in many ways.

As you look up into the sky and you see these great skyscrapers, they move into the clouds and into the world above us, and they look towards the future.

What sits between these two worlds, the past and the future, is our building, and that is the present.

Many people will approach the building not understanding what it is or what it does, and they will soon see their reflection in the glass and in the metal panels, and as they see themselves, they're drawn closer to it.

You see yourself reflected in the glass, which is then layered on top of the original columns from the World Trade Center tower.

You're part of all that history.

So this is, I think, a very interesting moment, where you start to feel your presence here.

The ground moves into the glass, but because it's not parallel to the stone, it turns.

So there's a kind of slight turn.

All of these are very soft things, but they affect the psychology of where you are.

- I'm wondering if there is some connection to the Hunt Library in this building.

- Well, there are many features that are often prevalent in our work, and one of them has to do with intimacy, how the building approaches you and how you can approach it.

And it should have a character or quality that allows you to feel comfortable.

- Tell me about this space.

- Well, actually, we're in a room that we sometimes refer to as the quiet reading room, and it is in fact very quiet.

The acoustics have been very carefully understood in this space.

And just adjacent to it, this place where we're sitting here now, is a kind of a lounge that looks off to the landscape, that gives you another moment of repose, and it's filled with natural light and very comforting.

- Most libraries carefully manage their resources.

They don't want to have to make everything available to the public.

The philosophy at the Hunt is very different.

It puts those resources right out front so every student has access.

- The way this room is built is to be basically a black box theater for technology.

So you realize we've got ten different colleges.

We've got dozens of different disciplines.

All of them can use technology in very intense ways, especially large-scale visualization.

- The Visualization Lab has it all: surround sound, ten projectors, video conferencing, and full 3-D capability.

How do you make transportation interesting?

- Well, first of all, you start off with some really great visuals... - Great music.

- And add a little sound in top of it, right.

Now, what you're looking at is a fully immersive simulation of Tampa, actually, is where we're going.

And imagine a classroom full of transportation engineers, civil engineers in this room, all sharing this experience and being completely immersed in an experience that they wouldn't have had if we were trying to look at a laptop or sitting at a desktop or something like that.

The most fun that I have is bringing students into these spaces, and they look around and they just say, "I can't believe this is here for us."

Because this entire building, that's the point, is to take this technology and not just show them something cool, but put it into their hands.

- What are we trying to do in this game?

- So the design for this game is that we're chasing that character in the front, who's a character named Noel.

And Noel has stolen a bunch of knowledge from the Hunt library.

- Down one floor is the Game Lab.

Student-created games like this one are used to develop interactive technology.

- The design of the Hunt Library really turns on its head the relationship between library users and the library facilities.

It's like they're basically giving you the keys to a starship and saying, "Come in and make use of this."

- Well, he's ramming me.

- Well, you got to play the game.

- [laughs] - So why is it in the library?

- Well, I think the thing about having it here in the in the library is, it's a shared resource for all the students across the university, as well as all the faculty members.

Okay.

So we didn't do too well.

- You lose.

- Yeah.

- Well, that seems rude.

- Okay, ladies and gentlemen, right now we find ourselves inbound San Diego harbor.

- In this lab, a Mariner Skills Simulator teaches Naval ROTC students to dock an aircraft carrier in port.

This is an amazing training tool for you, is that right?

- It is.

It's a really great opportunity for our students to really practice being at sea without any of the dangers.

- Do you mind if I take it out for a ride?

- You want to take a spin?

- I'll give it a shot.

- Sure.

All right.

- Come right.

Steer course 000.

- Okay, so he just told you to come right, steer course 000.

- It's very unique.

The only thing that we have in the Navy that mirrors this level of training is something that you will find on an actual naval base.

- How would you stop?

Do we just put the brakes on?

- We can do that.

We can do--the order would be "all engines stop."

- Oh.

- All engines stop.

- You said that the building felt like it was for you, like, your generation.

What do you mean by that?

- It's the feng shui of everything.

- The feng shui?

- The feng shui.

[laughter] - I just love that we have all this technology available for us.

And if we need a laptop, a camera, whatever we need, we can get it.

- Today we think of technology in terms of computers and screens and interactive screens.

We're trying to bring all of these worlds together.

We're not segregating high technology from low technology.

It should all feel comfortable with each other, and that makes it natural to access.

- It's very rewarding.

And, you know, libraries are things that get people excited.

When you think about your university, and I went to several of them, you don't just pool knowledge together and put it into academe and guard it, you know, and try to protect it.

No, no, we want people to share in it.

We want them to come.

We want them to come physically, come virtually, then talk to each other, share ideas, and all of us work together to make this country into what it can be.

- So now it's been, let's see, 13--it's been over 20-something years, and now you've achieved what you set out to achieve, and you're in this building now.

How do you feel about it?

- I don't think that I believe it.

- You're proud?

- I guess, you know, the strongest feeling I have is a feeling of having done something for the faculty and students, having made a difference that could potentially transform their lives, and you can't ask for anything more than that.

- When we think about a contemporary public library, we think about one for a college or one that serves a local community.

But what happens when both the college and the local community share the same space?

South Mountain Community Library is a partnership between the Phoenix Public Library and South Mountain Community College.

Now, they could have put the college books on one floor and the books for local residents on another.

Instead they agreed that the best way to create community was to bring them together under one roof.

- As popular as e-books are, people are still reading books in a variety of formats.

People are looking to libraries as that community center, this thing called the third place.

It's not work.

It's not school.

It's not home.

It's that other place that people are going in their community to connect with one another.

- One of the fundamental challenges we face every time we start one of these projects is, people ask the question, why do we need to build a library?

And of course with the information changing so drastically, and the ability to access information 24/7 on your cell phone, it's a very legitimate question.

But as we really think about how we use information, being able to bring all the people together with the information is what these libraries are all about.

- It seems simple enough: combine a college and public library into one building.

But as it turns out, South Mountain is a rare case.

So what's unique about this library?

- It might be the only fully integrated library in the country between a community college and a public library system.

- Community college needed a new library, City of Phoenix thought that they needed a branch library here, and it was a great opportunity and a point of pride for the community down here.

- This is where architects Jim Richard and partner Kelly Bauer entered the picture.

So, Jim, you're an architect, and, Kelly, you're an interior designer.

So that means that, Jim, you design the architecture of the outside and-- both: No, no, no, not at all.

- We're an integrated practice, and we're integrated and collaborative from the very beginning of the project.

- What we were trying to do is get a connectivity between kind of the daylight all the way down into the core of the building.

- Richard and Bauer draw inspiration from the landscape and topography in every building that they design.

- And the skylight, which you see above.

- Richard and Bauer have created a wide range of work, with much of it set in the desert.

The artful way in which they blend their buildings into the landscape has made them a favorite with colleges and libraries in the region.

- And we'll spend a lot of time early in the process talking and asking questions about the space, the way they want to feel in the space, the users.

Because we can't really just make it up out of thin air.

We really need to hear it and understand it from the users.

- Richard and Bauer use a design process that involves all the stakeholders.

It's called a Charette.

In essence, everybody from building maintenance, staff, college faculty, students, and the public gets together in a room to express their needs and wants, and discussion ensues.

- For it to work for the community, we couldn't have this wall between what was public and what was community college.

That was our goal from the beginning.

It had to be seamless, and that meant the service had to be seamless and the building had to be seamless.

The building had to be designed in that way so nobody saw what was public and what was community college.

- So tell me how the building works.

- Well, basically what we have is a traditional public library down on the ground floor within all the academic organization on the second layer.

It has an entry off of the public side, which is along our major roadways here, and then another entry off of the campus on this side, so it's actually a library with two entries.

- What's special about this project for you?

- Well, this was a really unique opportunity for us to develop a facility that represents the best of both-- the institution, the community college, as well as the public library, and bringing both of them together in a social center.

- So this is really a social center for two communities.

- Absolutely.

- Richard and Bauer anchor a building to a specific site.

Ideas emerge from their research.

Patterns of farms and aerial photos inform the floor plan, while the intricate design of a computer chip inspired the facade.

- We went back and researched kind of the pattern of the area.

- So you're saying digital chip looks sort of like the aerial views of farmland?

- Absolutely.

And it's amazing, the similarities between these different patterns.

And then we started with a very simple form and began to extrude and extract to do things like allow people to enter the building through a series of different axes, one being from the campus side and another from the opposite side to the community.

Natural daylight access to the exterior views such as the snorkel in the corner of the building that actually focuses up on the Estrella Mountains, which is the namesake for the community.

Effectively, this is a skin copper rain screen that allows for heat to be released from behind it.

And we use the copper really because this is the copper state in Arizona.

- And no panel weathers the same.

- They all develop this unique kind of a finish, and they'll change over time.

They get richer and deeper, and the idea of that statuary finish, that patina, is really what that's all about.

Not to mention, you never have to paint a building like this.

- So this is your favorite part of the building.

- It is, a beautiful view to South Mountain.

- And this is the one opportunity we use to open the building to the west to take advantage of this view.

- It's a beautiful view at sunrise and sunset.

But how does an architect plan for that view?

The architect uses a computer program that lets them geo-locate the building on the site.

What this means is that they can take their computer model and accurately put it onto a real-world map.

So here's the library, the outline of the library, and that's the context in Phoenix.

Now, with this, what they can do are solar studies, like testing how the sun will affect the building at any time of the day and at any time in the year.

Now, once they see how the sun is moving across the site, they can also begin to shape the interior design to take best advantage.

They can also use the geo-located model to test how much light is coming into the skylights, and then, by applying different screens over the glass in the building model, they can generate options until they've found the best quality of light.

So tell me about the material board here.

- Yes, this is a copper material that we started the pallet.

A full pallet of very durable materials as well as sustainable.

An interesting material is the sorghum that's found on the site, and we use the sorghum panel throughout the... - Wow, so this material here, it's a plant material.

You can see the amoeba-like shapes that are reflected in this panel.

You can sort of see those shapes again here.

- Exactly.

This is a frosted acrylic panel with vinyl that we used as enclosures in study rooms as well as signage.

- And then I see that again reflected in this panel over here, which is-- boy, it's aluminum, which is very heavy.

- Yes, yes, we use this for the handrail in the building as well as other enclosures for the rooms.

- Oh, and if it's for guardrails, that means that none of these openings can be more than four inches, so that's a code thing that has to do with a baby's head not being able to fit through the openings.

- Exactly.

- All of these different materials are used in surprising ways around the library.

- So it's a stair landing, so people come up here and hang out up here?

- Yes, exactly.

It's a quiet gathering space.

- And so these are the laser-cut panels.

So what does this one represent?

- Well, this represents the sorghum panel.

There are actually four in the building.

We have cotton, aster, citrus, and sorghum.

- South Mountain's site used to be part of an agricultural community with poppy fields and orchards.

And these patterns are found all over the library.

Aster, citrus, sorghum, and cotton all come from this region.

These patterns, etched in glass and steel, define quadrants around the building, each with a set of skylights, stairs, landings, and study halls in every corner of the library.

- So in each quadrant of the building, we have these two-story spaces, and the interconnecting stair has an extended landing that allows for additional gathering spaces to occur.

- So people hang out down here.

It's a bit active, but it's kind of a cool hangout place.

- Some benches and some writing areas.

Also to get a feeling of that two-story volume, we've hung these meeting spaces in that two-story space that are actually supported by these steel rods hanging from the structure above.

And literally hang these little volumes in this space so you get a sense of the upper and the lower floors and then the connectivity to the outside and up to the mountains beyond.

- And so tell me-- one thing I notice is that the quality of light here is pretty amazing, and so is that always something you're thinking about?

- Very purposefully.

So the buildings you will see will shift over the day as the sun moves around.

We have these spectacular sunsets here in the southwest.

And as that occurs, it changes the very nature of the spaces we're in.

- And then again, you don't always want direct light in the space.

It's a library, after all.

You want to protect the books.

You want to make it comfortable, not too hot, so what ways do you do that?

- Well, each one of these skylights is actually a triple-glazed system that's insulated, and we actually ventilate those areas, so we're removing the heat that you get when you introduce natural daylight in the space.

- These wide open spaces extend outside to a courtyard that children use for playtime.

I mean, talk about extension.

I see that in the materials and other details.

Tell me about some of these elements.

- Well, what we're trying to do as much as possible is develop that inside and outside dialogue.

So we bring the materials extending out to the exterior, such as the copper skin, and then this arbor reaching out into the landscape to create some shade.

- Even the vertical detailing on the facade, you can see that repeated in the fence.

Where did the idea for the rock wall come from?

- Well, we have open fences here to allow a little breeze and a little bit of a view out of the courtyard, but at the same time, we have a parking lot and a very busy traffic aisle on the other side, so we wanted a little bit of protection from that.

- But why rock?

- Well, we wanted the idea of nature and extending the landscaping of the space, so the fence is filled with the stone and recalls this idea of the mountains beyond.

- Libraries are shifting from being conceived as warehouses for books to interactive social spaces.

So if the way that information is accessed keeps changing, how will the library stay relevant?

Won't they have to rebuild every time there's a change?

- How we house that information and how we use it is something that's continually shifting.

So the library has to be able to adapt very quickly to that change.

- So how do you do that?

- Well, things as such as our accessible flooring system in these buildings.

So you can literally pick up anything in this library and move it around and reorganize it and plug it right back in.

- I could pick up a piece of this floor and... - Absolutely.

We're actually standing on an elevated floor that allows us to reconnect and disconnect anything in the library and reconfigure it.

- Now, I love when an architect is able to express how a building is made, and specifically, its systems.

Right here, this little sandwich tells you everything.

The bottom layer, this plastic has within it HVAC equipment and lighting.

Above that, you've got a plenum, or an air space, with an acoustic treatment on the underside.

Above that, structure, and finally, moveable floor system.

That's where all the conduit and cable goes for all the computers that are up on the top floor.

All of that system is contained within one layer.

Now, if you were to expose that, it'd look pretty messy pretty quickly.

But the architect puts a glass guardrail.

And between its reflections and the frit on it, it abstracts that, so it actually looks pretty good.

By any measure, South Mountain Community Library has been a great success.

- I know the students are loving it.

I've gone in and just, you know, walked around and talked to some students when it first opened.

What they loved was, they had a place that met all of their needs, not just their school needs, but all of their needs.

- So the first time you came here, what was your impression?

- When I came in, I was like, this is a really nice library.

I'm like, I'm going to be coming here every day, and this is what I'm going to be in.

It's great.

- This is not an ordinary library.

Like, I've been to ordinary, boring libraries.

I think this library, because of the design, makes it not boring.

- My wife just had a baby, and my wife is Mexican, and so she sent me here to get some books, some children's books in Spanish that she can read to him.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

I feel kind of like I'm in a museum when I'm here rather than just a library because it's so beautiful.

The architecture, the design, is very stunning.

- They love it.

I have people who come here and say this is the most beautiful library they've been in, and I'm not going to argue.

- One of the things I love to do is go back to our projects to see if they're being used the way that we anticipated, the way that the designers hoped, and this library has really surpassed what we had hoped it was going to do.

- So do you foresee a time where there will be no books, just computer monitors then?

- Well, my argument is no.

I think what we're seeing is actually-- since the bookstores effectively all but disappeared, what we're really seeing is, is now where do people go to actually have social spaces where they can engage with books and with discussion about the online resources that they have.

And I think that the library becomes that last refuge for the book and the collections that they house.

- So do you love your library?

- Of course I love my library.

Do you love yours?

- I don't like my library as much as this one.

- Can't blame you.

- Truthfully, one of the reasons I held off retiring until when I did was because I wanted to see that library open.

I wanted to be there when it opened its doors.

It was so long coming.

- So it was a proud day, and after that you said, "Okay, I'm done."

- It was fabulous, and then I was ready.

[laughs] - So far, we've seen two libraries that aren't traditional spaces that loan out books.

They've been interactive, social spaces.

So what we wanted to know, does a modern library need to be quiet?

Matthew, are the best libraries the quietest ones?

- Well, depends what you mean by quiet.

We did a study where we measured the background noise and interviewed the users of every library at Princeton.

And surprisingly, we found that the correlation was, people who rated their library very quiet actually had a fairly loud library.

And the reason for that is, what they're asking for is not quiet, but a lack of distraction.

So having an elevated background noise covers over all the little pencil dropping small noises that can interrupt you when you're trying to concentrate.

There's three ways we reduce distraction.

Here's a recording of some people studying, typing, dropping pencils, that sort of thing.

- It's your typical background noise.

- Yeah, typical kind of library background sound.

The easiest thing is, we can just put a barrier in and block the sound directly.

- But you can't always do that.

- You can't always do that.

So the next thing we do is take sound-absorbing finishes and put them either on the ceilings or the sidewalls or both in the space to control reflections and reverberation.

The third thing we do is add background sound to the space.

We can do that either with the ventilation system or with an active system like this, where we use small speakers to add an even neutral sound to the room.

- So to get the best-sounding library, it's really not just about making it quiet.

It's about finding the right quality sound.

At North Carolina State and South Mountain, the libraries were built to serve a very specific and small group of stakeholders.

In contrast, the Seattle Central Library had plans to overhaul their entire library system.

This included their flagship library in downtown Seattle.

Here the stakeholders included more than a million people.

With so many people involved, a new building ran the risk of design by committee, which can lead to awful results.

So how did they design Seattle's most iconic cultural building?

- You throw your lines, make sure your safety and your main are tied back correctly.

You repel over, and you just clean everything within a nice pattern, just go from the top, work your way down, make sure the windows look good, hit the ground, come back up, move over, do it again.

There's been a few window cleaners that I've had come onto this job, and they've tried to do maybe one drop, and they just-- that was it.

They packed up up their bags.

They left.

They quit that day.

So the good ones stick around.

- How high are you above the ground right now?

- We are about 50, 60 feet above the ground.

- That's not so bad.

- Not so bad.

- Gabriel, these windows are diamond-shaped.

Does that make it more challenging for you to clean?

- Oh, yeah, most definitely.

I'd say that this is the most challenging building in Seattle just because of the way it's shaped.

But the shape is so different, so you can't--it's not like a building behind you.

Look at the buildings behind you.

They're so simple, right?

- Yeah, the diamond shapes make it a little bit harder to gauge where you're at, so that's why at least two or three of us try to work together.

And then we--sometimes we'll mark the window to the right of us, just wet it real quick or put an X on it.

But all of us, all of our crew here has been doing the job for so long that we kind of-- we've got it down now.

At first, though, it does get confusing with the diamond shape.

- So how did Seattle end up with a landmark library?

Joshua Prince-Ramus was the lead architect of the design team.

- Public libraries today deal with two different and often competing demands.

One is access to information or an information service, and then the other is an ever-increasing series of social responsibilities, right?

And those two things are happening simultaneously.

And that's why we ended up creating these platforms.

- Back in 1999, the tech world was booming.

A bond levy passed with overwhelming support.

Nearly $200 million for new libraries.

And the new downtown Seattle library would be the flagship.

But not everyone agreed on what sort of library that this should be.

- There was clear disagreement about what a library was.

You know, should it be a Carnegie library?

Should it be a new library?

Should it be about books?

Should it be about technology?

You know, Microsoft was saying, "This is stupid.

"Why are you spending money on books?

We're spending billions to make the book go away."

- In fact, the site had been home to a library since 1906.

And it was all of those things.

It was a Carnegie library, one of 2,500 libraries built with money donated by businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie with the purpose of educating and entertaining the masses.

Around 1960, it was completely rebuilt before this latest version.

Sam Miller was the Seattle-based project manager with LMN Architects.

He was on the job site every day.

But I like this space.

I like that it's come down.

It's one of more of these quirky, kind of hard-to-explain, like, "where did it come from" kind of moves.

- How do you resolve some of this geometry and create these outdoor spaces, and that's the beauty of it.

Almost by accident, they kind of just happen, you know?

So the original concept was a series of platforms that went up.

The top is the headquarters.

The middle is the book spiral, and then the technical services level, and they're staggered off from one another to allow daylight and views in and out of the building.

And then the skin was conceived of as a net that was draped over the building and then pulled taut to show all the different uses or the program spaces within the building.

- Is that why you made it all glass?

- Yeah, and to me, that's one of my favorite things about the building is, when you're within, you just see the city around you and you know you're in Seattle.

That's part of the best parts of the building.

- And at nighttime, you get the reverse, right?

'Cause you can look through and you can literally see those platforms.

- That's right.

And all the lights and activity that are happening within in our long Seattle days in the winter, it livens up the street.

- The Seattle Public Library was designed by Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metropolitan Architecture.

Based in Rotterdam, OMA has high-profile commissions all over the world.

They're best known for challenging conventions, especially in how a building is used.

It's also been an incubator for young architects who strike out on their own after working under Koolhaas.

Joshua Prince-Ramus is now with his own firm, REX.

- Most people will say, well, the book is going away, but in fact, if you look at history and even look at, like, the advent of desktop publishing, books still continue to grow at the same rate.

- The Seattle Public Library conducted extensive research.

They catalogued the library's activities.

And what the architects discovered is that the library was only 1/3 books and information and 2/3 social interactions.

- And they were sort of shocked, like, when we showed them this because we couldn't adulterate this.

This was them, not us.

We weren't saying, "Oh, this is wrong.

You should do this and not this."

We simply said, "Hey, your program doesn't look like what you were saying."

They asked us to go away.

- [laughing] Don't come back.

- We weren't sure they were going to ask us to come back.

And, you know, this is the sign of a great client, because they could take difficult educated risks.

And we divided that program up into five more stable platforms, boxes, if you will, and four less stable in-between spaces, and we literally called them that, the platforms and the in-betweens.

- That would be something like this.

- It would be something like this, this, this.

So there are five trapped boxes.

When we pushed and pulled those boxes, it was in response to very direct requirements of the city.

So by example, this box has been pulled towards 4th Avenue in order to create a covered walkway along 4th Avenue.

That's something that's required.

So we just built it.

People look at the building and think it must be incredibly expensive, but in fact the underlying concept of pushing and pulling the boxes reduces the cost.

- There are lots of books in the Seattle Public Library, but it's the in-between spaces, as they call them, that grabs your attention first.

On the top floor, the Narver Reading Room.

Below the books, a mixing chamber with computers.

Under this is the living room, with a multi-level auditorium for concerts and author readings.

And on the lowest floor is the children's area.

This is a study model of the building, and what's pretty cool about it is, you can really see how the building works.

Now, on the lower level, you've got the entry.

At the mid level, you've got a big reading room.

Above that, the volume of books, the book spiral, and on top of that, the administration.

Now, if all of these were aligned, let's say, like this, you would have basically a glass box.

It might be a little bit boring.

But by taking those different programs, those different uses, and sliding them in different locations, sliding that administration in that location, taking the book spiral, having it sort of in the middle, having this reading room pulling in that direction, you begin to create this very interesting geometry.

Now, taking that geometry and then wrapping the skin, the glass skin, the diamond-shaped skin, all over the building, now you really see this very sculptural proposition.

And this is really taking those different rooms-- the administration, this location, book spiral in the middle, reading room in this location, and just letting that drape over those surfaces.

That's what creates the diagonal.

Now, the building when you see it here looks a bit different from its context.

Maybe it doesn't fit in so well.

But to me, what's interesting about it is, it does respond any many different ways.

One is the scale.

The scale of these buildings around it are pretty much in keeping with the library.

Secondly, a lot of these buildings are made of concrete, steel, and glass, which is what the library also, of course, is.

And finally, this is a very steep angle coming from the top of the hill down to the water, and you really feel that.

You can see that in the side streets here.

That angle is very, very prominent.

And you see it reflected in the building.

Certainly both in its section or elevation, but also in its facades.

So I think, in many ways, the building does respond very well to its context, and it does feel like it belongs.

Deborah Jacobs was the city librarian of Seattle.

Night after night, she conducted public forums across the city to built community support.

For Jacobs, a strong library system is essential to the health of a city.

And what do you like about this space particularly?

- What do I like about this space?

I like the fact that you can look at those businessmen walking into the library, look at those kids interacting with information, look behind me and see what's happening with people using technology, and look around and see what the city looks like.

It's pretty much all here.

To me, it was more important to be open to the idea of what was the future, because we knew then even in 1999 that the world was changing, and it was changing fast.

And asking them, really: what are your hopes and dreams for the library?

We had homeless people that got together and talked to the architects.

We had staff groups.

But we also had open forums.

- How do you build the heart of the community?

- The way to build a heart of a community is to be a public library that's engaged.

I find this to be true here in Seattle, where the library has become, you know, such a central piece for the downtown.

If the library is connected to the community and the community's needs, then it's magic.

One of the things I love about taking the escalator and going backwards is that you get these great views of the city.

You see yourself in the building that's across- every building around us, and then you also see the water.

And in Seattle, really only the wealthy people or people working in big office buildings, nice, big firms, have access to seeing those water views.

But in the public library, everybody gets it.

It truly is the people's palace.

It's a place where people can just come and sit and be in their own space like a public library should.

- It's not really the books, is it?

It's just-- it's the place.

- It's the knowledge space, you know?

And with the trained navigators, information navigators.

This is on the podium where I got married.

- Oh, really?

When did that happen?

- It happened in February of 2013.

- And why did you pick this space of all the places you could get married?

- Well, this space is ideal for having the right size wedding.

You can take these chairs and turn this into a dance floor.

You can put a bar over here and tables over there and chairs and tables for people to sit at.

- But what about the space?

- And the space is magnificent.

Whether you get married in daytime, in the rain, or at night, you get a sense of the city that surrounds you.

- Every library needs space for their book collections, but the number of books never stays the same.

Some sections like fiction might grow, while reference may get smaller.

So how do you plan for this changing volume of books?

You get a solution that's hard to perceive.

It's called the book spiral.

- The idea the design team came up with was to have a spiral so the book collection wraps around on itself.

- So these are the numbers right here fro the different sections?

- That's right, and they can change as the book sections change.

- But why not stairs?

- It's funner to go down.

It's also accessible, so people in wheelchairs, people pushing cart-- book carts, and parents with strollers are able to navigate the book spiral.

- The idea behind the book spiral is to be able to experience the entire volume of books-- that's basically four floors of books--continuously, that is, not punctuated with stairs between the different floors.

And the way that they do that is by using a parking garage type of arrangement.

what I mean by that is, each of these floors is tilted or ramped very gently, so it's ramped down and it becomes flat.

And you're able to go all the way from the 10,000 level of the Dewey Decimal System all the way down the bottom and experience all of the catalogued books continuously.

There's two more unexpected spaces that are sandwiched into the Seattle Public Library.

Normally, meeting rooms and an auditorium are fairly standard additions to a plan, but not here.

Christine Higashi manages the programs in the auditorium.

Having it open and connected is very nice then.

- Yes, it is, and, of course, music will always spread out into the rest of the auditorium.

I did do a children's event this Saturday that was delightful, to see about 60 children and their caregivers, and the screaming and squealing and laughing and the participation was wonderful.

- Then there's the meeting space-- the very red meeting space-- rendered in a thick polyurethane paint.

- Well, when we lay out a floor initially, we do what's called a bubble diagram where we just sketch out little circles, or bubbles, to lay out where the spaces are, and here it worked so well, we decided to build the bubble diagram.

- You literally built the sketch, the little circles.

- That's right.

- So why is it red?

- Well, during design, we used to refer to this space as the aorta, and it seemed to fit, since it's the heart of the building.

And red seemed an appropriate color for that.

- That's the inside of the building, with all of its shifting, stacked boxes.

But what about all these diamond-shaped windows?

- So this is the most complicated corner, where you have four panels come together and resolve at a single point.

- And why are the windows diamond-shaped?

- So diamonds are a stronger shape than squares, and they allow the sloping surfaces to be--structurally resist earthquake and wind, and also where you have complicated triangular geometry like this, diamonds are more easily fit into that shape than a square would be.

- So the diamond shape is stronger, but how exactly does that work?

Let's talk to a structural engineer.

Now, Paul, the architect told us that diamonds were stronger structurally than squares.

What's the difference?

- Sure.

So in the square structural frame like we have here, this has got simple connections, and if we try to take horizontal forces through the structure-- and those forces come from things like wind and earthquake-- if we push on this frame, it falls over, which isn't good.

So one way of solving that structurally is to fill in that square frame with a wall, and in a case of, say, a house, that would be a plywood sheer wall.

For a bigger building, this would be a reinforced concrete sheer wall, and sheer is from horizontal forces.

You can see as I push on it, it's now a very rigid structure taking the forces down to the ground.

- Okay, so you're happy because it's very strong, but I'm an architect and I'm looking out, and I cannot see the view.

So do you have another idea?

- I do, I do.

So sorry about this.

I think we can do better.

One way of fixing that aspect is what they did in Seattle, in the case here, where they went with triangles and breaking that down to form diamonds as well.

As I push at the top, the force, as I push horizontally, goes along this member, which is a very efficient way of taking forces, along structural members.

It goes in compression along that one and intention along the one opposite, which is why it was lifting up here.

And as you take these forces straight down to the ground, you can get smaller member sizes, and it's a very efficient way of carrying the forces as a structure.

- So it's structurally sound, you're happy.

I can look out the window, so I'm happy.

- We're all happy.

- It's also an energy efficient building.

There's a metal mesh inside the glass that's like a mini sun louver.

That allows you to have a view outside.

It reflects away sunlight before it can get into the building.

That plus efficient mechanical systems makes for an energy-efficient building.

- ♪ The monkey's on the bus go... ♪ - I believe libraries are really the cornerstone of our democracy, and people need to see and feel it.

They need to see the children interacting with information and space, and they need to be proud that something like a public library exists and that something like this exists in their own community.

- And how do you think it turned out?

- I think it's terrific, and I'm very fortunate.

I work a couple of blocks away, and I get to use it as my library.

So I come and pick up my books here, and I use it-- every week, I'm here.

- This is a picture from opening day, and I sat just near the exit where people were leaving.

And the happiest experience of my professional career at that moment was listening to people as they came out.

Some were going, "Wow, this is amazing.

"It's so cool.

I love it.

And it's so amazing how it works."

And half were coming out going, "I think it's really ugly, but, damn, does it work."

- But it works as well.

- But it works, you know?

They didn't come out and go, "Hey, I don't want to use this."

They still were like, "It's weird, but at least it's cool.

"I like how I can find the books in the books spiral, "and I like the fact that the moment I go in the building, I know how to move from space to space."

- Welcome to this week's book club.

- When I was hired, they said, "We're looking for a world-class library," and I was like, "No.

"That's not what we want.

"We want a library that is gonna serve the needs of the community."

- So the way to make your world-class library is not to strive to create something like this, but rather to think about who it's for, where it's supposed to be, and that's the way you do it.

- And to be responsible.

I mean, this is a public building.

So to be responsible to the users, to the taxpayer, and at the same time, to create something that's here for today and tomorrow and for our children after that.

[all cheering] - So what do these three library spaces have in common?

They all recognize the importance of the written word, information, and research.

New technology is the driver.

These spaces show that the way we access information is rapidly changing, and this affects the design of the space.

But this doesn't mean that human interaction has been left behind.

Children, students, adults, and teachers will continue to find the library as a central hub for discovery, inspiration, and community.