The Seattle Museum of Pop Culture (previously known as the Experience Music Project) was completed in 2000 by starchitect Frank Gehry. Opened soon after his landmark project in Bilbao, the building is typical of Gehry’s deconstructivist period style.
This building is even more exuberant than many of Gehry’s other projects, with six distinct volumes of varying materiality.
The building is located on the Seattle Center campus, home of the iconic Space Needle, which was originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair. One of the most interesting features (for a transit buff like me) is the fact that the original Seattle Monorail from the World’s Fair continues to run straight through the builidng! The eggshell blue volume that the train passes through was designed to evoke the movement of the monorail trains with a signature Gehry curvaceous ripple.
The interior of the building is raw and expressive of the curvilinear structure that supports the external facade.
Images by Jonathan Choe
