[Publib] $49,000 in signage to fix what the architect wrought

[Joe Schallan]

Patrons getting lost in the new Seattle main library seems to have  
become a major problem there:


Too many people getting lost in new downtown library
Professional is hired to create directional signs

By Kery Murakami
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sept. 5, 2006

For all the architectural artistry of Rem Koolhaas' downtown Seattle  
library, there was just one little problem with the building: People  
kept getting lost inside.

Visitors would walk down the gently spiraling rows of books,  
following the Dewey Decimal System, and just past the section ranging  
from 0 (cassettes) to 0.196 (paranormal), they'd dead-end at a  
window . . .

Complete text available at

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/283819_library05.html


The newspaper reporter quotes a library official as saying that the  
signage project has helped.  I wonder how much.  (And I don't expect  
a report from the front lines to appear here.  When I posted on the  
Koolhaas building previously, I was advised privately that Seattle's  
director so personally identifies with the project that any staff  
member commenting honestly on it would commit professional suicide.   
If that is so, I find it appalling that professional staff there  
would feel so cowed.)

The article begs the question:  How did it come to pass that an  
architect was so indulged that he was allowed to design an unusable  
building?  A building that now, shortly after its opening, requires  
$49,000 of internal signage?

Joe Schallan
Phoenix