Des Moines Register
04-03-06
Questions overshadow shiny exterior
Talk About It: A building of distiction?
MIRA ENGLER
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
No doubt, the new library of Des Moines, the city's most important civic building
project of the past two decades, is a cause for celebration.
Its viable educational functions, inviting interiors, energy-conserving features,
comfortable array of seating and luminous night atmosphere are all welcome. In
particular, the transparency of its facade's copper-mesh screen encased between
two glass panes enables the interior to become one with the exterior. During the
day, library patrons and readers connect with the building's surroundings, and,
weather permitting, they can sit outside of the library's café. At night, from the
outside, the softly illuminated bookshelves seem to float in the urban landscape.
Kay Runge, the library director, and other proponents hoped it would have
"cutting edge and different architecture." While it may be that, the architectural
formal statement and the character of the park around it (or what's left of it)
remain causes for lament.
On its Web site, the city touts the library as "a visionary structure that places the
reader, books, and learning in a green heart and will immerse people in a park."
Over time, the surrounding trees and the sedum-planted green roof are expected
to envelope the organic, amoeba-shaped building. Its makers call it "a building in
a park."
The current rhetoric of "park" and "green heart" in the midst of the city readily
subscribes to that of 19th-century urban parks, such as New York's Central Park,
which was conceived as a rural escape from the ills of the big city, indeed an
anti-city idea. The 19th-century park image of a naturalistic style emulating
ponds, tree groves and hills has been replaced in Western Gateway Park by the
more contemporary, familiar suburban-style park of genteel, sentimental and
passive, with open, sweeping lawns and stylized water features.
David Chipperfield, the British architect of the new library, has espoused this
vague, popular park rhetoric and image. True, he submitted four widely divergent
alternative proposals for consideration and let city residents, library patrons and
fundraisers decide, but that surely doesn't relieve him from responsibility for the
final outcome.
On his initial visit to the site, Chipperfield drew a first "napkin sketch" of a
biomorphic, free-flowing building, according to Runge. That shows his initial
intentions for the building to become "one with the nature." (Strangely, the
building takes on the shape of an airplane, which became the graphic icon of the
library.) For Runge, the organic form captures the locals' desire to "break from
the box," to "reach out and invite," to have a building with a "continental flavor."
But a building does not need to have "arms" to be considered inviting and
reaching out, and it can be different from a familiar box and still respond to
existing urban context.
In the process, Chipperfield overwhelmed the limited, two-block area of the site
with an excessive two-floor footprint of 117,000 square feet, taking up about 30
percent of the lot. And he broke the outdoor space into disparate, left-over
spaces to be filled later with several-dozen trees by a landscape architect.
Concern about the excessive footprint and low height of the building had been
voiced during the design-alternatives phase by a group of local architects, led by
spokesman William Dikis.
Chipperfield, who focused on his building and the experience from inside, has
overlooked and compromised the experience from outside. From the south and
west, the library resembles a suburban office park without civic stature. Despite
the well-intentioned plans for the outdoor public spaces, which may or may not
happen, there is little park space left. And public spaces around the building lack
well-defined plans for urban, rather than suburban, activities.
What remains is to hope that the new public library will indeed disappear in its
park, making the exterior architecture irrelevant to begin with.
MIRA ENGLER is associate professor of landscape architecture at Iowa
State University.
The issue
When British architect David Chipperfield was commissioned to design the new
Central Library of Des Moines, he envisioned a structure that would allow patrons
inside to feel as if they were sitting in a park reading a book. It would be wrapped
in glass to expose interior spaces to the outside world and bring the outside
world into the interior spaces. He wanted the building to be "light and friendly and
open and cheerful and quite accessible," but also "have a certain rigidity to be
quite clean," he told the Register in an interview last month. Does his design fulfill
his vision and provide Des Moines a new public building of distinction? Here are
two contrasting views: Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, likes
the building. Mira Engler, an associate professor of landscape architecture,
voices more reservations.