Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. The process of design -- Diamonds and sponge / Albena Yaneva -- Just how public is the Seattle Central Library? : publicity, posturing, and politics in public design / Shannon Mattern -- OMA's conception of the users of Seattle Central Library / Ruth Dalton -- Part II. The building as artefact -- One-way street / Kim Dovey -- A phenomenological and hermeneutic reading of Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Central Library : buildings as lifeworlds and architectural texts / David Seamon -- The feel of space : social and phenomenal staging in the Seattle Central Library / Julie Zook and Sonit Bafna -- Seattle Central Library as place : reconceptualising space, community and information at the Central Library / Karen Fisher, Matthew Saxton, Phillip Edwards and Jens-Erik Mai -- Part III. The library and its users -- Emotional responses to locations in the Seattle Central Library / Saskia Kuliga -- Why people get lost in the Seattle Central Library / Amy Shelton, Steven Marchette, Christoph H�olscher, Ben Nelligan, Tim Shipley and Laura Carlson -- Using social media to gather users' feedback of the Seattle Central Library / Ruth Dalton & Saskia Kuliga -- Discovering serendip : eye tracking experiments in the Seattle Central Library as the beginning of a research adventure / Clemens Plank and Fiona Zisch -- Epilogue : drawing together the multiple perspectives of the Seattle Central Library / Wilfried Wang.