Shhh! Take the time to let library's look speak for itself

By DIANE STEINLE

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 27, 2001

Do you like it?

Or do you hate it?

Few people seem to have an opinion between those two extremes when it comes to the proposed design for the new Clearwater main library.

So far, more people seem to hate it, and they have even hurled insults at it, saying it looks like a prison or a car wash or a warehouse.

They have made fun of its barrel-like roof and of the awning on the west side, which some say looks like something you would attach to a mobile home.

They have looked at the wall of glass on the west side and wondered, has the architect lost his mind to face a multistory wall of glass toward Florida's brutal afternoon sun? What about the heat? What about the glare? What about the air-conditioning bill?

I'm sure the architect hasn't lost his mind. He's Robert A.M. Stern, a famous New York architect and architecture teacher, and I'm confident he knows what he is doing when he draws a building. The man has designed everything from birdhouses (as one of 53 architects invited to design a birdhouse for a museum exhibition, he created an owl house in the style of a classical temple), to high-rise office buildings, to college campuses and art museums. He's done a few libraries, too.

He did not design the new Sarasota library. A number of Clearwater residents have suggested that library is so special that Clearwater should just copy it here. For the benefit of those who haven't been to Sarasota, there is a picture of the inside of Sarasota's Selby Public Library on this page.

I suspect that if the Sarasota design had been submitted here, some percentage of those who saw it would have been appalled. For one thing, it is a round building that, to me, looks a little like a spaceship. Inside, a two-story round atrium is ringed by black torchiers that have a futuristic look. The walls are blue and purple, and the chairs are yellow and red. I think it's fun, but many people in traditional-minded Clearwater wouldn't like it.

I've been studying Stern's work the last couple of weeks, trying to figure out what Clearwater should have expected when it hired Stern.

It isn't hard to find information about Stern, whether you look on the Internet or in the popular press or in several gorgeous, coffee-table-style books that feature hundreds of photographs of his buildings here and abroad.

But it is hard to peg his style. Some of his work is traditional, borrowing from classical styles he seems to revere. Others are contemporary. Some are Goofy: He's done a lot of work for Disney, including Florida's Disney Casting Center, which has checkerboard walls, mouse-ear-shaped light fixtures and seats, and stately columns topped with gold statues of Donald Duck, Tinkerbell and other Disney characters.

There are a few recurring themes in his work. For example, he designs graceful, striking staircases. Many of his buildings have open-air structures on top like the terrace in the Clearwater library design. He likes to give you something interesting to look at when you are inside one of his buildings and look up -- rotundas, skylights, sloping ceilings, or just complex geometrical lines created by structures or shadows or light fixtures.

He likes rounded roof lines and has used them on several of his buildings, including the Brooklyn Law School and a Banana Republic store in downtown Chicago, though the Clearwater library's roof is the most extreme example I've seen.

It's safe to say that Stern's designs are so varied that Clearwater had no way of knowing what his design for the Clearwater library would look like. About all the city could be sure of is that Stern had the experience and the creativity to come up with something unexpected, something unique, something people would come to see -- in other words, the "signature building" Clearwater residents and officials said they wanted for their new library and its great site on the bluff overlooking Clearwater Harbor.

Now the question is, is Stern's design something they will accept?

I've been looking at the drawings for a couple of weeks now, and the design has been growing on me -- slowly. I look at the green-tiled roof and I can see a green-tinted ocean swell moving toward the shore. The soaring awning on the west side is a device to shade the building from the sun, but it reminds me of a sail. I like the tall columns that support the roof over the main entrance on the southeastern corner of the building and imagine feeling dwarfed by them as I walk inside. There are things I don't like, such as the unadorned east side.

Residents have two more opportunities this week to look over the designs and a model and express their opinions: from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the East Library, 2251 Drew St., and Wednesday at the Countryside Library, 2741 State Road 580. Library Director John Szabo has been carrying the drawings to public information sessions, gathering as much public reaction as he can before the design goes to the City Commission.

Commissioners will have the difficult task of deciding to accept the design, reject it, or ask Stern to modify it to better suit Clearwater's preferences, whatever they are. Some people gulp at the thought of little Clearwater telling Robert Stern to change his design, but I'll bet he could take it. In one of his books he notes that architecture is "a public art," and adds, "Buildings must not only speak, they must say something that is comprehensible to the public."

So what does this building say to you?

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