Ambivalence is the mood that dominates Lawrence W. Cheek’s reveiw of the Douglass-Truth branch library expansion. He writes:

The addition, which grows out of the east side of the 1914 Renaissance-ish Revival building like a copper cocoon, is so alien to the mood and language of its mate that it belongs to a different universe.

It’s easy to respect what Schacht Aslani has done here. It’s impossible not to be fascinated by it. But it’s very difficult to like it.

The solution? A backward gesture? No, Cheek’s uncertainly would be settled if the architects of the project, Schacht Aslani, had looked completely forward and rejected the old building it grows out of. With Daniel Libeskind’s new “deconstructionist pile” (Denver Art Museum) in mind, Cheek writes:

It would be better, frankly, if the addition were twice the size and three times as radical — then the 1914 building, which is no masterpiece, easily could be forgotten.

Here, I have to agree with Cheek. Douglass-Truth branch library expansion is impressive but even more could have been done, a harsher break could have been made. The past has its place, but the future must be hostile to the order of present and past things. The future must be trouble and not what the majority of buildings completed in the year 2006 are. One by one, they arrived and failed to trouble anything—from the past or in the present. The new buildings just want to be buddies with everybody.