This massive spiral evokes the interwoven strands of DNA, and, like DNA, it is the generative epicenter of the structure, the stories and knowledge from which all newer technologies and human activity emanate. While this organization system is a highly structured single sequence, the experience of walking the Book Spiral is anything but. It was designed to “create a kind of almost arbitrariness,” Koolhaas said. “To create a walking experience, an urban walk.”
Every element of the rest of the library is deliberate, dynamic, efficient, and inclusive. There’s the Children’s Center, complete with stroller parking, family restrooms, story time in a variety of languages, and 80,000 books, DVDs, CDs, and other items. A Microsoft theater (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $20 million to the project, the largest gift to a public library at the time) provides a venue for lectures, seminars, and screenings that spans two levels. Womb-like corridors bathed in red paint lead to neutral-colored meeting rooms tucked into the fourth floor, presenting opportunities for more formal interaction and collaboration. The Mixing Chamber offers technological resources, including a large computer lab, job boards, scanners and image editing equipment, and study tables. The second level, closed to patrons, is where the magic of book sorting happens — though it’s hardly magic at all. A conveyor belt system sorts books by category, positions them all with spines in the same direction, and whisks them pneumatically to their rightful spots.
