Jeffrey T. Baker
Looking Across the Spiral
If I'm to turn my attention away from issues of practicality and just remark on the Book Spiral at the Seattle Central Library as a conceptual idea there is a considerable amount of elegance that can be unpacked from the very simple idea of an ascending collection of collected knowledge. The spiral form is an expression of natural beauty (so often explored in mathematics and art: i.e. the Golden Spiral, which is a visual expression of the Golden Mean) and therefore may suggest that the accumulation of knowledge is a unique expression of human nature. The spiral hints at time and the looping path states that learning is a journey made in conjunction with the movement of time. The farther we walk, the higher we find ourselves (yet always with the ability to look back and through to where we've been), working our way toward some final attainment— that enlightenment, or awareness of hidden powers, or connection with the vast and infinite, that led Dante ever upwards and seekers of all kinds towards the mountaintops.
All through the spiral you see the vibrant neon escalator taking people up and down on a contained track that is separated from the books. It looks very efficient, but it denies those patrons the opportunity to wander among the stacks, and that somehow seems tinged with an inescapable pathos on the four floors where the books have unequivocally dictated the nature of the space.
Seattle, Washington — March 2009
Looking Across the Spiral
If I'm to turn my attention away from issues of practicality and just remark on the Book Spiral at the Seattle Central Library as a conceptual idea there is a considerable amount of elegance that can be unpacked from the very simple idea of an ascending collection of collected knowledge. The spiral form is an expression of natural beauty (so often explored in mathematics and art: i.e. the Golden Spiral, which is a visual expression of the Golden Mean) and therefore may suggest that the accumulation of knowledge is a unique expression of human nature. The spiral hints at time and the looping path states that learning is a journey made in conjunction with the movement of time. The farther we walk, the higher we find ourselves (yet always with the ability to look back and through to where we've been), working our way toward some final attainment— that enlightenment, or awareness of hidden powers, or connection with the vast and infinite, that led Dante ever upwards and seekers of all kinds towards the mountaintops.
All through the spiral you see the vibrant neon escalator taking people up and down on a contained track that is separated from the books. It looks very efficient, but it denies those patrons the opportunity to wander among the stacks, and that somehow seems tinged with an inescapable pathos on the four floors where the books have unequivocally dictated the nature of the space.
Seattle, Washington — March 2009