Museum of Pop Culture

Bird's eye view

Top view

Interior, view of the ceiling

The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) is a popular music museum in Seattle . It was donated by Paul Allen , the co-founder of Microsoft , as the Experience Music Project (EMP or EMP Museum) and is located on the Seattle Center campus in the vicinity of the city's landmark, the Space Needle . The EMP was opened in 2000. It has had its current name since November 2016.

architecture

The building was designed by the architect Frank Gehry and its shape is reminiscent of other buildings by the architect, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao , the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Gehry Tower . The shape was described as a "melted electric guitar" in a Seattle Weekly article . The comparison came from Gehry himself, who explained the design process: "We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters , bringing guitar bodies and using these shapes to develop our ideas."

criticism

The response from experts and the press was rather negative. The architecture critic of the New York Times , Herbert Muschamp , described the building as "something that crawled out of the sea, turned around and died." The Forbes Magazine led the building in a list of the ten ugliest in the world. The building will also jokingly referred to as the population The Blob (dt. The Blob) (see also blob architecture ) or The Hemorrhoids (dt. Hemorrhoid ), respectively.

use

The building was originally designed as the Jimi Hendrix Museum. The museum mainly exhibits rock music items and uses innovative multimedia technology to present them. The building houses the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and, in cooperation with the University of Washington , the radio station KEXP .