"the building that made Rem Koolhaas a star"
LOL
He was already a "star" long before he put a library in Seattle...

FYI, the graphics issue rob! pointed out a month ago in the linked post still hasn't been fixed. I was able to discern the type well enough to answer my question, but still, it's annoying.

Thanks for sharing that. Cool stuff.

note: this is an OFFICE building. not a 24/7 apartment building filled with people who take showers and cook. that is a tougher nut to crack.

The koolhaus building would be a complete success if it wasnt being disguised as a library. It's a homeless shelter and thats what makes it a profound piece. Our greatest building is a homeless shelter; this is progress. Everyone knows that libraries are just warehouses for stone tablets. Take the inflated library budget and invest in free wifi on every street corner and ipads for every poor kid in south seattle. Hire a few home depot laborers to man the stone tablet warehouses.

The sculpture park is woefully incomplete. It should start at the eastern shore of the duwamish and extend all the way to golden gardens. This shoreline is a god-given public right-of-way and should be reclaimed immediately. The hand full of private land owners on this stretch are thieving squatters. All of the petty causes that the stranger prattles on about are bullshit compared to this one. The only real wealth is in the land. Everything else is just a coupon for a flatscreen tv. All of our best real-estate should be made public and rewilded.

@3: Office buildings use more of some things and less of others. Net zero water may be easier in an office, although there is only parking for bikes in the Bullitt Center and showers on every floor, so tenants may shower a fair bit. But on the energy side, there will likely be significantly higher demand than a residential building would require. Think 30-50 computers per floor. And eliminating toxics would be equally challenging in any setting.

The sculpture park and that library are nothing for the city to brag about. The sculptures suck and the library is a freak show.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I wish they had built it on a different lot somewhere. It just feels too big for that space and like it's suffocating that little park in front of it. Not to mention the way in which it was built in front of the residential buildings already there, closing them in as well. Granted, those people should not have counted on someone not blocking their views, but still! It's obviously an amazing undertaking, but I can't help but thinking it's an ill-fitting eyesore. :(

The greenest building is the one that is already built, and the greenest feature any new building can have is a designed life span of more that 100 years. PV roofs, water and energy reclamation/conservation, good passive design are great, and should become standard...we need those things. But if this building becomes a moldering eyesore and/or the complex systems break down and it is demolished in 50 years- then the energy and materials wasted on it would have been better used building a standard structure with the flexibility to remain useful and serviceable.

"a standard structure with the flexibility to remain useful and serviceable."

You mean like the old Central Library? After all, it was designed to have more floors added on, and with a good cleaning and some seismic work, an expanded version of it would have been fine, but it wasn't "world class" or "vibrant" enough. so we got a vanity library, designed by committee, with a big splashy name attached to it.

I think the importance of the Bullitt Center is its experimental nature. It really is an odd duck. Not every building should be built like it, and not all tenants will behave like its tenants (although the Seattle Energy Code is slowly but surely pushing tenants in that direction) but if there are lessons to be learned from observing its operations, its more than earned its keep. I don't understand all the naysayers.

@2, I emailed the webmaster this morning too, and it's now been fixed. One or the other of us swung the silver hammer at the right time and place. Thanks for the backstop.