Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center
Seattle
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson seamlessly unites library and civic functions under a great sweep of planted roof.

© Nic LeHoux

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Rem Koolhaas left no high-concept gesture behind in his widely acclaimed Seattle Central Library [RECORD, July 2004, page 88]. In general, though, Seattleites shun assertive, big-idea architecture. But a modest neighborhood northwest of downtown found in Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ) an architect willing to think small in just the way it wanted. Each element of the firm's Ballard Library is painstakingly deployed to do low-concept (in the best sense) double or triple duty.

For its branch system, Seattle has stuck with relatively small neighborhood facilities. The 15,000-square- foot Ballard branch is one of five recent replacements in a large-scale overhaul of the city's 27 satellite libraries (all by local architects, including Miller/Hull and James Cutler). Ballard is among the largest (some are as small as 5,000 square feet). "With technology changing and the central library as a hub, we can provide appropriate services in branches of these sizes," explained David Kunselman, Seattle Public Library's senior capital projects manager. "And they have a more neighborhood feel."

Thatis important in Seattle, where neighborhoods strenuously guard their prerogatives. Residents participated in the selection of BCJ, and pushed an ambitious agenda of environmental sustainability. The library plan also incorporated a neighborhood service center where people can pay taxes and utility bills and deal with city agencies without going downtown. Another convenience is provided by radio-frequency identification tags, like those retailers use, which allow books requested online to be automatically routed to branches for patrons to pick up and check out on computerized kiosks

A broad, planted roof, the library′s signature gesture, curves gently up on its northern edge, opening clerestories underneath to sweep daylight inside. The roof not only speaks of shelter, it portrays the environmental agenda, a key educational aspect of the design. Seeded with drought-resistant local plants, the roof absorbs 86 percent of the site′s storm runoff and reduces heat gain. (Library users can inspect the roof in person by permission.) School children\and everyone else, for that matter\can monitor its growth through periscopes mounted near the entrance. A small lobby exhibition explains its advantages and those of other sustainable elements, such as photovoltaic panels on the roof and a daylighting scheme\refined at the Seattle Daylighting Lab\that uses clerestories and skylights, supplemented by light fixtures equipped with sensor-driven dimmers.

Inside the library, tapering steel tubes support a laminated-beam ceiling. A plane of suspended ventilation ducts, and several enclosed areas that huddle under the ceiling, visually dissolve the borders of the space. A kind of spatial indeterminacy reins: "open-ended," as partner in charge Peter Bohlin describes it. "People want to be in a softly defined space," he said, rather than in more "single-minded" architecture.

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Formal name of Project:
Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center

Location:
Seattle, Washington

Gross square footage:
15,000 sf Library, 3,100 sf NSC, 15,000 sf Parking = 33,100 sf total

Total construction cost:
$6,500,000

Total project cost:
(including land, fixtures and furnishings, and books): $10,900,000

Client:
Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center

Architect:
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
1932 First Avenue Suite 916
Seattle WA 98101
206-256-0862 phone
206-256-0864 fax
www.bcj.com