Dreaming of Books in the Eulali & Carlo Scandiuzzi Writers' Room in Seattle Central Public Library

OMA - CCTV Completed

Yes, it's finished, China Central Television Headquarters by Ole Scheeren and Rem Koolhaas is a fact.

Check out Iwan Baan's photographs of the Design Exhibit at MOMA, where his giant photos form the backdrop to the architects presentation and his photos of the construction of CCTV.

Read Paul Goldberger's piece of June 2008 Forbidden Cities in the New Yorker and view the accompanying slide show with Iwan's images.

Remembering the devastating fire in February 2009, the delivery of this humongous project is an even bigger feat.

LEAP at Seattle Central Public Library

LEAP at The Seattle Public Library stands for Library Equal Access Program. LEAP allows patrons who are hearing or vision impaired to have access to all items in the library's collection. 

Access is double easy now that LEAP has relocated (a while back) from Level 3, to Level 1 (Fourth Avenue entrance), no more zigzagging to get where you want to be.

Make a B-line from the front door to LEAP.

Still, here are some zigzagging pointers, so you know what to expect.

• To the left you'll have the elevators
• On your right you'll pass the Welcome Desk, the Check-in-and-out counter
• Again to the left is the entrance to the Microsoft Auditorium and the up-and-down escalators

Judith's Feet - Photo Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times

You'll find yourself on top of Public Art, conceptual artist Ann Hamilton's wooden floor, 7200 square feet of computer routed first sentences in eleven languages. This department is called LEW for Learning English as a Second Language and the World Collection.

• To the left a wall with a comfortable chair or two and display cabinets
• To the right stacks with the World Collection
• Reference librarians have their desk amidst the stacks to the right
• Behind their desk are the carrels for patrons who study English as a Second Language

As you continue your B-line to LEAP, you'll find the SirsiDynix Gallery which leads to the Children's Department. It has a polyurethane floor and a stainless steel wall.

• To your left the old-fashioned pay phones and water fountains
• On the right tables to study or read between the stacks of the World Collection

Past the telephone bay the wall continues and you'll find

• Men's Bathroom
• Women's Bathroom
• Entrance to LEAP 

Every fourth year we need a leap year to keep our Gregorian calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun, at the library LEAP is there for you every day!

This post was published on February 29, 2012 on Judith van Praag's blog Hope Filled Jars

This work by Judith van Praag is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Will Rem Koolhaas Neighbor Frank Gehry in Los Angeles?

A quick note in response to article by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times. Who's going to win the competition for Eli Broad's personal collection's home?
Just returned from visiting Los Angeles, I can't wait to go back to the vibrant, creative city of angels. Next week Mr. Broad may make his decision about what's to be added to the area that already for a while has not much to do with the downtown of my first acquaintance in the mid-seventies.

OMA and Leigh & Orange Architects in Hong Kong

There's 101 years difference in age between OMA and Leigh & Orange Architects; the former founded in London in 1975, the latter in Hong Kong in 1874. Last year Leigh & Orange celebrated its 135th anniversary, check out the history of the firm on the L&O website, images of projects dating back to 1901 up to and beyond 2008 give a good idea of the firm's versatility.
OMA & L&O won the contest to design the Chu Hai College campus in Hong Kong, see the OMA-site for more information.

OMA at Home in Rotterdam

The Kunsthal, the Cube of Cheese, the Triplet Towers, ever so slowly but steadily Rem Koolhaas has been putting his mark on his home-town. And now OMA, in partnership with ABT Engineers & Co and Werner Sobek is to build the multi-functional StadsKantoor or city-hall & center of Rotterdam.

According to Architectenweb the ANP announced that the People's choice had not been OMA's design but that of SeArch. But Contest Committee members apparently didn't like the prominent "green cones" (I think they resemble cocktail shakers) in that firm's design.

A soundless video on YouTube shows imagery related to the StadsKantoor (City Hall) design, and for a split second the viewer can also detect the three towers OMA is building in the harbor city of Rotterdam.

Does the structure of StadsKantoor remind me of Lego®?
Yes, it does, a Lego® Transformer. Look at those awesome legs that from a certain angle seem to support the whole floating body!

Promised to be the most sustainable building in the Netherlands the complex will catch rainwater, have elevated terraces and homes with gardens, and facades with sandwich panels and lightweight thermal insulators (nanogels).

DOKU ARTS Shows Houselife

Image of the article by Tracy Metz, is from newspaper NRC, photographic image is from the docudrama Houselife.

Guadalupe Acerdo is the cleaning lady of the "Maison a Bordeaux", the "best design of 1998" according to Time magazine.
She's prominently featured in "Houselife", a film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine.
Acerdo holds her ground in the lift, or on the "movable floor" in the house designed by Rem Koolhaas.

Houselife may be viewed during DOKU.ARTS the Festival of Films on Art
June 11-14, 2009
At the Filmmuseum
Vondelpark 3, Amsterdam

It pays off to buy more than one ticket at the time!

Film tickets
Regular €7,80.
With reduction: €6,50.
Friends of the Filmmuseum €4,50

When buying four tickets at once, you pay only €22,50 (€5,60 per ticket). These tickets can be used by one or more persons.

Ticket reservations:
tel. +31(0)20-5891400
Please pick up reserved tickets at least 30 minutes before the start of the screening.

Rem Koolhaas Twitters

Birds do it, educated flees do it, zoologists and architects do it.

Rem Koolhaas collects philosophical architectural thoughts on twitter.

PRADA - TRANSFORMER

Rem Koolhaas together with associates Kunle Adeyemi and Chris van Duijn, and design architect Alexander Reichert sign for the architectural project: the Prada - Transformer.

To read in a press release that the Prada pavilion, "the building", its four sides a combination of: hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle, will be moved in position for different events by a crane, boggles the mind. However, the concept becomes totally clear, acceptable and brilliant when you take in Koolhaas's online design presentation.

From the Prada Press Desk:
The website is the result of a collaboration between Prada, AMO (the mirror image think tank of OMA) and 2x4, a multidisciplinary design studio from NY focusing on art, architecture, and fashion, world wide.

The concept of the site is strongly linked to the architectural project. Equal to the built pavilion, which transforms to accommodate different events, the website regenerates its graphics and contents according to the changes in use of the actual structure along time. The main navigation system is a timeline which allows users to intuitively scroll back and forward revealing the calendar of the pavilion and the related content.

For further information:
Prada Press Office
+39.02.541921
ufficio.stampa@prada.com
PA - TRANSFORMERRAD

Rem Koolhaas a Kind of Architect

The Nortwest Film Forum presents:

REM KOOLHAAS: A KIND OF ARCHITECT
(Markus Heidingsfelder, Min Tesch, Germany, 2008, Digibeta, 97 min)
Presented by Northwest Film Forum

When: March 6 through 13, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Where: Northwest Film Forum, 1515 - 12th Avenue, Seattle
Cost: $9

For tickets and more information visit the Northwest Forum website.

Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Flames

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing has gone down in fire. The hotel which was scheduled to open in the coming summer of 2009 is part of the state owned and operated Beijing TV studios —CCTV— designed by OMA. The main towers and horizontal bridging section of CCTV have been spared. The blaze is said to have been caused by nearby lit fireworks.

OMA presents Theater Design Taipei, Taiwan

Amphitheater, arena, black box, in the round, proscenium; there are as many different theatre structures as there are styles of theatre art. The Office of Metropolitan Architecture, world wide known for multi functional auditoriums has presented yet a new approach with the proposed stage design for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. 

The cube shaped building is to hold three performance spaces (1500, 800, and 800 seats) which may be used in combination, as well as individually. Such flexibility will allow (local) theater companies to create more experimental spectacles. And this innovative theatre complex may also become an interesting venue for foreign, space demanding companies such as Cirque du Soleil. 

The routing of the public through the Performing Arts Centre will allow patrons a look into the back stage areas. This "peek into the kitchen" is reminiscent of what the great visionary/director Ariane Mnouchkine has offered the public for many decades with her Theatre du Soleil.

Iwan Baan in London

In OMA's case Iwan Baan is the one who goes where no one (holding a camera) has gone before, or will go after him for that matter (too late, the curtain wall has gone up). If you've seen the photos he took for OMA in Beijing (on his website), you know he's got what it takes to create lasting impressions even before the project is finished.
Note to Self and Every Other: When in London go see show.

Rem Koolhaas Takes Seat in EU Council

What will the European Union be like between 2020 - 2030?
A council of wise (well sorry girls) men is going to think about and discuss the future of the EU.
Initiator of this gathering is the French president Nicolas Sarkozy. President Sarkozy's ulterior motive for a discussion about the borders of Europe is his own unwillingness to let Turkey join the EU.

Suggested members of the 'reflection' group are Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Letland's former president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Finnish Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila, the Polish former president Lech Walesa and the Italian former EU commissary Mario Monti.
The former prime minister of Spain, Felipe Gonzalez will be the Chairman.

The group will report on the future in 2010.

OMA à La Défence

Draw a line on a map of Paris, from the Pyramid by I.M. Pei, and "Le Petit Arc du Carrousel" (in the gardens near the Louvre, Les Tuilleries) through the "Arc de Triomphe" to "La Grande Arche" by Von Spreckelsen and Andreu, in the northwest of Paris and you've got the "Grand Axe". The neighborhood at the end of the line, La Défense has mostly office buildings.

Rem Koolhaas presented a design proposal to revamp La Défense somewhere in Venice during the Biennial (see comment Piet Vollaard below)

Through November 23rd you can visit the Dutch submission to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennual, organized by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).

Libraries for All

In 1998 the Seattle voters helped pass a bond measure Libraries for All, 196.4 million dollars to renovate 22 existing, and build 5 new branch libraries, as well as to design and build the new Central Library.
Rem Koolhaas co-founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and former Seattleite and then OMA partner Joshua Prince-Ramus were principal designers of the award-winning Central Library building, along with Seattle-based LMN Architects.

On Saturday September 13 the conclusion of the successful 10-year building period will be celebrated in all Seattle Public Libraries.

Rem Koolhaas was scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. in the Microsoft Auditorium, but his presentation has been cancelled.
Here's some old and more recent footage where you can see and hear him speak.

Joshua Prince-Ramus former OMA principle, and since 2006 president and co-founder (with Erez Ella) of REX will present the key note of day-long celebratory presentation in the Microsoft Auditorium (4th Avenue/ 1st floor entrance) at the Seattle Central Library, downtown.

Can't make it?
Read Joshua Prince-Ramus manisfesto or listen to him speak on TED

The presentation is co-sponsored by AIA Seattle.
Admission is free and open to the public.
The Central Library is located at 1000 Fourth Avenue.
For more information, call (206) 386-4636.

The Seattle Public Library Foundation and Friends of The Seattle Public Library ( co-sponsored by USbank) are issuing "passports" with photographs and information on all the libraries in the system. Patrons are encouraged to visit all of them, and if they do, they can collect stamps at each of the branches. Some of those who can show a fully stamped pass in January of 2009 may be eligible for a special gift!

EU Quarter in Brussels

The Office of Metropolitan Architecture is one of five European firms chosen to present plans to redesign the EU Quarter, where offices of the European Union are located. The plans should include apartments, houses and shops.

OMA again in Rotterdam - Kaas van Koolhaas

Rotterdam was bombed during World War II and in rebuilding this world renowned harbor city somehow an anchoring center was omitted. When you arrive in Rotterdam by train, the first impression you get of the city is that it's relatively new. The street that runs parallel to the railroad and the one perpendicular to the Central Station are lined by large post war buildings and some towers. The boulevard straight ahead leads to a shopping center, a village style mall, built to replace what was destroyed during the war. The heart of the city is a replacement, and not more than that.

The architects of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture envision a cube that will fill in that architectural and emotional hole.
An anchoring structure that will return that certain central quality that a city of Rotterdam's proportions and importance needs.
The cube will find its foundation partially on top of existing buildings, and will show "holes" allowing for a connection between the interior and the city.

Only in Holland, where cheese cubes are the obligatory snack presented with wine and beer, a project of this size could be likened to a cube of cheese. So be it, Rotterdam will have "De Kaas van Koolhaas" (Cheese by (or of) Koolhaas).

Seattle Central Public Library

The Seattle Central Public Library opened its doors to the public at the end of May 2004.
At the beginning of the following month volunteer library docents started guiding patrons through the building on general (focused on library functions) and architectural tours.
By the end of May 2008, it turned out that during the four years that the library had been open, 34,000 visitors signed up for a hike through the 11-story building (covering 10 floors, since Head Quarters on the 11th floor is off limit for patrons).
This number did not include all the tagalongs and unregistered tours.
The library of OMA and LMN became an important tourist draw, and continues to be part of the itinerary of many people visiting Seattle.

OMA / AMO in Italy for PRADA

Imagine Milan, an industrial building renovated and expanded to create a home for the Prada Art Foundation.
More later…

According to Michael Kimmelman for the New York Times Magazine (3/23/2008) the PRADA ART FOUNDATION may be likened to New York City's DIA or Houston's Menil as far as being chic and slightly arcane. Arcane?