The supporting cast

"The best thing about working with Rem Koolhaas is to have learned not to think of problems as problems, but as opportunities. If you can keep thinking that way, you can create something that you never would have imagined otherwise. That is the core of our office and that comes from Rem. There are a lot of ways to wash over (architectural) problems with money when you have an amazing budget for a project. But it's something else what our office can do even with a modest budget."

DALE STENNING, 48

Senior project engineer for Hoffman Construction on the Central Library, the go-to guy, as he was for Experience Music Project.

"The library was much more complicated than the EMP. For one thing, it was three times the size for roughly the same budget. Koolhaas' design is relentless, unforgiving in all the right uses of that word. It was very demanding for us with its appearances, its sight lines and its reflective surfaces. If something is not flat at the library, you know it immediately. You have to do things extremely accurately or you fail. EMP has spaces between various systems and you were not joining edge to edge; it also had a looser palate of materials. Gehry allows for construction to unfold, Koolhaas has a brutal and unforgiving approach."

ROBERT ZIMMER, 47

Architect who served as original project director on the Central Library for Seattle's LMN Architects, local partner with OMA.

"The envelope is pushed in all of Koolhaas' projects. He is looking at the world in a different way, taking a different path. He is uncompromising and that is admirable. It is not easy to be uncompromising in the world, not easy in America to do uncompromised work. There is a certain amount of compromise that Koolhaas is willing to do, but what Seattle is getting in the library in the end is unparalled for a public project."

TERRY COLLINGS, 61

Executive director, Seattle Public Library Foundation, which raised an $83 million endowment in the past five years to support the book collection and programming.

"The biggest challenge in raising money of this type is that there are so many circles of wealth in the community that you are trying to reach and where you have no connections. That's why you have to get enough people on your team that you have people with influence to reach into those constituencies. It's a real building process. 5 I give credit where credit is due. We were damn lucky. We were in the right place at the right time with the right project and that truly made a difference."

ALEX HARRIS, 54

Capital program director, Seattle Public Library, in charge of construction of Central Library, six replacement branches and five new branches, plus expansions and renovations at 14 branches.

"We had to recognize how much change this represented for the library, not just physical change but in thinking about how things are done. We had to keep people on an even keel, focused on what is important. And there has been a lot of problem solving, everything from architect selection to technical problems to where vehicles enter a construction site. What you have to do is see the goal and keep plugging away at it. At an early staff meeting, I said that this is like mountain climbing, where you keep putting one foot in front of the other and progressing forward."

JILL JEAN

Director of the Central Library.

"I was trained as a librarian, but I had to begin to understand architecture, design, construction, an entirely different language. I learned more about building buildings than I ever thought I would have the opportunity to do and I'm grateful for that. It's been a grand old experience for a little old librarian who used to read stories to kids. It was a big leap, but I've really liked to balance a lot of balls at the same time ever since I was in fifth grade. I thrive on it. I think balancing all these things tried my patience, but never made me leap over the edge."

�Interviews by John Marshall

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