The Central Public Library in downtown Seattle, north of the Belltown neighborhood, is one of the library's in the country, and possibly world, you should visit. The interior compliments the exterior in a juxtaposed manner; instead of being hard angles the walls of conference rooms, video viewing rooms, and other large partitioned spaces all have doorways and arches that are very curvy and fluid. The stacks, or shelves of books, has a central walkway that was made with a slight upwards gradient. This enabled anyone, including people with mobility problems, to walk upwards in the building without ever having to use stairs. The walkway is called the Spiral and was another great feature of a building that was made with real sustainability and age friendly concepts in mind. Also in the Reference/Research area there is a LED board with constant data streams from the library checkout desk, like what kind of books are being checked out that day or what the latest book to arrive at the library might be. They call their research and reference area the Mixer and it is just off the large manga and graphic novel collection also housed in the library.
Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus were the lead architects at the firm of OMA/LMN while the structural engineering was handled by the firm Magnusson Klemenic Associates in participation with the firm Arup. The building is located on the original site of the previous central library for Seattle.
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