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In Seattle, Washington's new Central Library, a taut skin of steel and glass shrink-wraps a stack of shifting, precariously balanced volumes. According to the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), the irregular form arises from an almost slavish devotion to a detailed program developed by the library board and staff. They began the commission with a three-month-long investigation into the future of the book, calling on local tycoons whose fortunes were built upon the very digital technologies that would seem to make printed matter obsolete. The architects pushed and pulled the platforms almost 50 feet out of vertical alignment with each other to capture light and views. As much as OMA enjoys casting itself as technician not artist, there's an aesthetic at work, even when it verges on anti-aesthetic. The outrageous hot-pink curved hallways threaded among the fourth-floor meeting rooms play to the public's desire to be shocked by the avant-garde.

The opening of the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM), Antoine Predock, FAIA, was confounded by sunshine, a generally rare commodity in the damp western side of Washington State. The museum provides a crucial link in the effort of this old industrial city to remake itself. The collection is largely focused on work of Pacific Northwest artists, which drew the museum's leaders to Predock's sensitivity to the western landscape. The body of the 50,000-square-foot building is tucked into the diagonal of a freeway on-ramp that cuts along the eastern edge of the site. INSET: Culture and college restore lost glitter to a once-struggling...

Focuses on the architectural design of the North Mason Timberland Library in Washington. Consideration on the role of the library as a center for the community; Use of the concept of shed roofs and clustered forms of timber mills; Feature of oversized bay windows in the main reading room.

Details how architect Rem Koolhaas' design for the Central Library in Seattle, Washington gained public acceptance. Popularity of Koolhaas in Seattle; Efforts of city librarian Deborah L. Jacobs to reverse public opinion on the project; Design highlights; Conceptualization of the library's design' Project highlights.

Focuses on whether multi-service firms will dominate the architectural design marketplace and on how all-architecture firms will fare. Impracticality of the traditional separation of architecture, engineering and construction; Clients' demand for faster delivery of projects; Managing the complexity of many building types.

In 2001, the Seattle subsidiary of New York-based advertising agency McCann-Erickson moved and recast itself as Sedgwick Road, the name of a Port Orchard, Washington, street leading to a ferry dock. Recently, the company turned to Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects of Seattle to dismantle the creative roadblocks thrown up by the traditional design of the company's previous post. Sedgwick Road's old quarters in a downtown Seattle office tower mimicked the buttoned-down layout of McCann-Erickson's Madison Avenue offices, with executives seated along windows and staff located in the center. The new office is on the edge of downtown, in a 1926 brick building unremarkable except for a two-and-a-half-story machine shop with clerestory windows and a delicate scissor truss of welded steel angles. In the office space overlooking the machine shop, boundaries are not firmly drawn between departments. Instead, desks are clustered or stretched along a sinuous line, freeing up valuable spaces for informal gatherings.

Focuses on the architectural design of Good Samaritan Hospital's Children's Therapy Unit and Child Development by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca in Puyallup, Washington. Concept of the architectural design; Hospital facilities and amenities; Appeal of the open-ended approach to the ark theme.

The article evaluates the architectural design of the University of Arizona Cancer Center at Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center designed by ZGF Architects.

Highlights the architectural design of Pacific Place and Coal Harbor buildings in Vancouver, British Columbia. Manifestation of urbanism; Emphasis on the guidelines of the U.S. policy over the architectural developments in the country; Statement from director Larry Beasley on the city planning procedures.

The architectural firm Gensler Architects unveiled the design of a new museum to house the largest private car collection in the world. The 750,000-square-foot Harold E. LeMay Museum in Tacoma, Washington, will explore the idea with the car through a combination of education and entertainment. A 90-foot-tall spiral ramp will display 150 of the collection's 3,000 cars, with 50 feet of it above grade and the remainder burying into the museum's underground car vaults. The $100 million museum will be built on a 9-acre site that is part of the City of Tacoma's $10.7 million contribution to the project. Ground breaking is planned for 2005, with the museum to open to the public in 2007.

Focuses on the architectural design for the Olympic Sculpture Park of the Seattle Art Museum by Weiss/Manfredi in Washington. Description of the infrastructure; Feature of the rotating collection at the grassy slopes; Assessment of the ephemeral installations.