Seattle Public Library - Inside Outside

Seattle Public Library

Place

: Seattle, USA

Client

: Library Foundation Seattle

Architect

: OMA, New York with LMN Architects, Seattle

Collaborators

: local landscape architect Jones & Jones Architects, Seattle.

Scope of work

: Carpet design, ten patterns in three colours. Landscape design for entrance plaza’s, street borders and transitional advisory on interior materials & finishes.

Date

: 2000 - 2005

Inside Outside had a multiple scope in this project: designing the landscape surrounding the building; advising on interior materials and finishes; design of the auditorium curtain and of several plant-carpets in three colors inclusive a “real life”-plant carpet in the reading room.

The building is enveloped by native trees of Seattle inter-planted with fields of grasses and perennials, which slope, fold and overlap as planes of various greens. The landscape ‘infiltrates’ the transparent façade and folds into the interior in several places. Inside, the green fields continue and gradually transform into textile carpets, printed with large-scale plant images from the plants used outside. The carpets create an informal trajectory through the building and at the same time they are defining spaces to sit and read, to relax and meet.

In the auditorium, Inside Outside designed a white-and-green finned curtain with a PVC-lining with bearskin-print, that connects to the field of green chairs designed by Maarten van Severen and the brown polyurethane floor surface, creating another garden-like space in the heart of the building. This is one of the earliest projects realized by Inside Outside. Nearly two decades later, the design is still in place and remains practically unchanged.

Team Inside Outside

: Petra Blaisse with Simao Fereira, Marieke van den Heuvel, Mathias Lehner, Peter Niessen, Floris Schifferli

Images ©Inside Outside ©I.Baan ©P.Ruault