Experience Music Project

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Project Name: Experience Music Project
Construction year: 2004
Website: www.empsfm.org
Address: 5th Avenue North 325 , SEATTLE-WASHINGTON - United States

Architect(s) : Gehry Frank (www.foga.com)
Project Category: Cultural

Latitude: 47.6215
Longitude: -122.349

A Music Museum

The Experience Music Project, or EMP, is a music museum "combining interactive and interpretive exhibits to tell the story of the creative, innovative and rebellious expression that defines American popular music". Located in Jimi Hendrix s hometown of Seattle, Washington, the EMP stresses innovation in music and inherently strove to express this theme in its permanent home. Choosing Frank Gehry, on the heels of success with Bilbao, was the obvious choice. Not to say, though, that the architect regurgitated the Guggenheim or that the EMP wanted their own. With the museum Gehry created a unique building, yet one with his unmistakable stamp.

Design

Unlike Bilbao s shimmering titanium and muted limestone, the museum s exterior is made up of stainless steel and aluminum, the former in three finishes (mirrored purple, lightly brushed silver, and bead-blasted gold) and the latter in red and blue. Each finish or color illustrates the different areas of the interior, which ranges from exhibits and sensory immersion to performances and the creation of music. The metals are treated as surfaces instead of volumes, some parts resembling cloth blowing in the wind, and help to understand the spatial complexity of the interior, which is not so much distinct spaces but a continuous flowing space.

Contributed by ArchiTeam