The new Seattle library is incredible: a masterpiece of public stewardship, from the superb space to the excellent information design, daylighting, color interaction, metaphors, choice of typeface, and all-around impressive facilities. The stacks are built in an ever-so-gradual spiral of gently sloping floors, with nice big numbers on the floor to tell you where you are in the Dewey decimal system. A translucent sheet of plastic covers the ends of the shelves, which softens the forceful ubiquitous shapes that abut the ends of library shelves everywhere, allowing you to see the books first, instead of the shelves first. Day-glow elements lighten the space, whose color is mostly, of course, gray (in keeping with the sky). The blocky foam-rubber chillin'-seats, in warm earth-tones, are comfortable, solid, and enveloping, and probably cheap, too.

The designers of this building obviously understand the pleasures of space. There are lots of vertiginous views and nifty outlooks. When you get to the top of the spiral, there's a balcony and you can look down through the canted steel-and-glass mesh walls to the city streets below. A small sign near one corner says, "highest viewpoint," as if it were an alpine outlook. Which, in a way, it is. Besides the overhead view of streetborne passersby, you can ogle Seattle skyscrapers all around and, through them, the Olympic mountain range on the other side of the Sound.

The building's only weakness, in the opinion of this author, is as a sculpture in the city. It's shifting angularity is a bit displeasing to me: it seems like something off balance, and somewhat neurotic. Still, the overall effect is not too strong, and at street level, it fits well enough into the surrounding cityscape. The building has a lightness, both in color and in weight, and its steel mesh actually echoes an older brick building down the street, a Seattle landmark (I'm not sure what it is), providing a modicum of context-sensitivity.

When the library was under construction, I was a frequent critic, based on the displays that were showcased at the temporary library. But the execution turned out to be impeccable, and the imagination, grand. I was quite impressed when the Capitol Hill library was rebuilt a few years ago: it turned out to be an open two-level room, with lots of light, and a little walkway running around the edges of the higher level. It was modest in size but expansive in feeling.

Now I learn there is a comprehensive plan to overhall the whole library system, one branch at a time. The Seattle libraries have always been principally hangouts for the bored and out-of-work, and the old branches were principally dull, neglected, gray boxes; these new buildings ennoble those out-of-work wayfarers and provide truly useful services to the community. It looks like the Art Museum is getting an overhaul, too. I'm now quite jealous of you Seattle citizens and your civic services.