COMMISSION

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) asked me to give them my eye on their brand new Seattle Public Library. Together with Joshua Ramus, partner at OMA, I spent 10 days in, under, and on top of this 11.000m2 library in the center of Seattle, USA.

When libraries are under threat from a shrinking public realm and digitization, the Seattle Central Library creates a civic space for the circulation of knowledge in all media. The library's various programs are intuitively arranged across five platforms and four flowing "in between" planes, which together dictate the building's distinctive faceted shape, offering the city an inspiring building that is robust in both its elegance and its logic, situated in the heart of the city.

OMA's ambition has redefined the library as an institution like an information store where all potent forms of media are presented. Now that information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultaneity of media and the curatorship of its contents that makes the library.

O.M.A. has been working with artists in different disciplines for many years. Joshua Prince Ramus, partner of O.M.A. at the time, commissioned this project and invited me to come to Seattle. This proved to be an extraordinary chance that inspired me to create 8 new photoworks, in which new ways of communication, alternative ways of visualisation and the interplay of fact and fiction has been envisioned.

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.)

Frank van der Salm, Plan, 2004