Operating on the principle that the grand library of the past cannot be simply resurrected, some cities have taken a different tack. Seattle's new library, for example, doesn't have a reading room at all. Instead, Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture have designed a single, freewheeling space inside a giant, multilevel greenhouse. This is the library conceived as a drop-in center, filled with computer terminals, magazine and newspaper racks, lots of comfortable seats, and, yes, even bookshelves. Like most modern libraries—and unlike most traditional libraries—the stacks are open to the public, although as books become digitized, this part of the building is likely to shrink. The Seattle Public Library has the rough urban chic of a converted loft. When I visited, the users were a mix of students, tourists, and street people—many reading newspapers, even more using the computer consoles, very few in the stacks.