HIGH-TECH BIBLIOPHILIA.(Rem Koolhaas's new Seattle public library building is thrilling in its design)

If you wanted to build a new library downtown somewhere, Rem Koolhaas is probably the last architect you would think to hire. For years, Koolhaas has been ranting about how traditional cities don't matter anymore, and how the rise of new technologies has made public space obsolete, and how when people leave their houses the only thing they want to do is shop. His firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which is based in Rotterdam, wasn't on the original list of architects being considered for a new library in Seattle, but one day in 1999 Koolhaas's partner, Joshua Ramus, who comes from Seattle, got a phone call from his mother saying she had read in the local ...