music experience project seattle

• Awards Season
• Big Stories
• Pop Culture
• Video Games
• Celebrities

What to Expect When Renting a Floating Home for Your Seattle Getaway

Are you planning a trip to Seattle and looking for a unique and unforgettable accommodation experience? Consider renting a floating home for your vacation. Seattle is famous for its stunning waterfront views, and staying in a floating home allows you to immerse yourself in the city’s maritime culture while enjoying the comforts of a cozy retreat. In this article, we will explore what you can expect when renting a floating home for your Seattle getaway.

Unique Accommodation Experience

When you choose to stay in a floating home, you are opting for an accommodation experience like no other. These charming houses are built on pontoons or barges, giving you the sensation of living on water. Each floating home is uniquely designed with its own character and style, offering an authentic taste of Seattle’s bohemian lifestyle.

Breathtaking Waterfront Views

One of the main attractions of renting a floating home in Seattle is the breathtaking waterfront views it offers. Imagine waking up to panoramic vistas of the Puget Sound or Lake Union right outside your window. Whether you prefer sunrise strolls along the dock or sunset cocktails on your private deck, these homes provide unparalleled access to some of the most beautiful scenery that Seattle has to offer.

Cozy Comforts and Amenities

Contrary to popular belief, floating homes are not rustic houseboats but rather fully functional houses with all the modern comforts and amenities you would expect from any vacation rental. Most floating homes feature spacious living areas, well-equipped kitchens, comfortable bedrooms, and clean bathrooms. Some even come with additional luxuries such as hot tubs or rooftop decks where you can relax and soak up the atmosphere.

Proximity to Attractions

Another advantage of renting a floating home in Seattle is their proximity to popular attractions and activities. Many floating homes are located within walking distance or a short drive from downtown Seattle, making it easy to explore the city’s vibrant neighborhoods, iconic landmarks, and diverse dining options. Additionally, being on the water allows you to easily access activities such as kayaking, paddleboarding, or taking a boat tour to discover the city from a unique perspective.

In conclusion, renting a floating home for your Seattle getaway promises a one-of-a-kind experience that combines comfort, stunning views, and proximity to attractions. Whether you are seeking a romantic retreat or a family vacation, staying in a floating home will provide memories that will last a lifetime. So why settle for ordinary when you can make your Seattle trip extraordinary by choosing a floating home rental? Book your stay today and get ready to be captivated by the charm of these unique accommodations.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

MORE FROM ASK.COM

Skip to the content

20 Years of MoPOP: Experience Music Project Launches With Weekend of Concert Festivities

To celebrate 20 years of the Museum of Pop Culture, we're highlighting 20 of the most notable moments from MoPOP's history. For our nonprofit museum's fourth milestone, we look back at opening day for Experience Music Project.

After breaking ground on the Seattle Center Campus in 1997, Experience Music Proj ect   (now   MoPOP )   opened i ts doors on June 23, 2000. The celebration included a  weekend of concert festivities, including   performances by  the Red Hot Chili Peppers,  Patti Smith, Snoop Dogg, Metallica, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Bo Diddley, Alanis   Morissette , No Doubt, Beck,   The Cold Crush Brothers, Bratmobile, Ann Wilson, James Brown, and many others .

• 20 Years of MoPOP: Our Very First Artifact - Jimi Hendrix's Mixing Console
• 20 Years of MoPOP: Our Very First Oral History - Al Hendrix
• 20 Years of MoPOP: Our Very First Exhibition - 'Strats, Studios and the Seattle Sound'

For contests, the latest news, and behind-the-scenes content, be sure to follow us on  YouTube ,  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter .  If you like what you see, support our work by   making a donation to MoPOP today !

About the author

Museum of Pop Culture Museum of Pop Culture --> Museum of Pop Culture

The Museum of Pop Culture’s mission is to make creative expression a life-changing force by offering experiences that inspire and connect our communities.

Cookie Notification

Please adjust your travel plans accordingly. Seattle's SR99 Viaduct will close for approximately three weeks starting January 11, 2019. To help you prepare, here are some resources to help make your travels to MoPOP stress-free. View traffic alert info ▸

By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and use of cookies and similar technologies. We store cookies and similar technologies on your computer or device to provide you with a great experience and help our website run effectively.

• Random Project
• About WikiArquitectura
• Collaborate

Experience Music Project

Introduction

Photos WikiArquitectura (July 2008)

Other Photos

Did you find this article useful?

Really sorry to hear that...

Help us improve. How can we make this article better?

• Book With Me!
• Architecture
• Food & Drink
• Architect Guide

Frank Gehry’s “Experience Music Project” Building in Seattle, Washington (now MoPoP)

The Experience Music Project (now the Museum of Popular Culture ) located in Seattle, Washington, was designed by world famous architect, Frank Gehry and was completed in 2000.  The project was commissioned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. It was to be a tribute to the Seattle rock legend Jimi Hendrix and to American music in general.

“Architect Frank O. Gehry has made a career out of bending vertical and horizontal lines of building construction into something defiant and sometimes poetic. With Seattle’s EMP, opened just over a week before the Fourth of July, he has met his perfect client in (Paul) Allen and his metaphorical match in rock-‘n’-roll. The resulting architecture is a unique performance and a new landmark on the edge of the Seattle Center.” — Clair Enlow, “ Frank Gehry Rock Temple “, in ArchitectureWeek No. 9, 2000.0712

Exterior of Gehry’s Experience Music Project building (now MoPop)

Circling the exterior, not one single angle or view of the building is the same as another. Colors change, the curves and shapes shift, the whole mood changes. There are three thousand panels made up of 21,000 individually cut and shaped stainless steel and painted aluminum shingles. Like a snowflake, each shingle is unique, allowing the whole building to become a fluid, moving masterpiece. Each shingle responds to different light conditions.  On the day I visited, it was a typical Seattle gray sky, so the reflective qualities of all of those panels weren’t as strong as if it had been a blue-sky day.  The undulating shapes, the changing colors, the difference in views from each angle all were intended to convey the dynamic energy and creativity of music which is constantly evolving.

A Quintessential Frank O. Gehry Building

The building was commissioned in 1995 and was completed in 2000. Interestingly, in architecture history, this was right after the successful completion of Gehry’s very famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. After the completion of that building, everyone in the world was seemingly lining up for a Gehry building of their own. The EMP building (now the Museum of Pop Culture or MoPoP) has many of the typical Gehry characteristics of his other works like the Guggenheim or the Walt Disney Concert Hall, but it also is unique in its use of color and various finishes.

In the EMP, the viewer finds stainless steel in mirrored purple, lightly brushed silver and bead-blasted gold, while the aluminum features are in red and blue. The building was supposedly inspired by a smashed guitar, in honor of Seattle’s Jimi Hendrix and his rebellious style. The story goes that Gehry and his staff played around with chopped up Fender Stratocasters and rearranged the pieces during the design process.

According to MoPop’s website, “When Frank O. Gehry began designing the museum, he was inspired to create a structure that evoked the rock ‘n’ roll experience. He purchased several electric guitars, sliced them into pieces, and used them as building blocks for an early model design.” (Source: www.mopop.org)

Reaction to the Building

The building elicited a wide range of responses from the architecture community, Seattle residents and the world. Some people find it to be an absolute monstrosity. Others appreciate its uniqueness and feel Seattle needed such a building to shake up its otherwise (at the time) monotonous architectural cityscape. Having seen several of Gehry’s masterpieces, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Fondation Louis Vuitton building in Paris , the EMP building doesn’t come close to the grandeur and elegance those two buildings exude. The Seattle building seems messier, a bit hastier put together.

Technology and Design

Apparently, Gehry went through three full iterations of the building before Allen approved. The first design was too literal a depiction of an electric guitar – a quintessential post-modern habit of architects at the time. The final version was more abstract, but you can still see the guitar in the funky ‘frets’ on top of the building.  Just as the Renaissance sculptors could create flowing fabric out of hard marble, Gehry is a master at creating movement in an object as stubbornly inanimate as a building. Another amazing feature of the building is the intricate amount of detail went into all 21,000 panels. At the time, there were few fabricators and Gehry partnered with Catia, a French 3-D design firm that originally specialized in aerospace design.

The EMP building was an enormous leap in customized design, which allows for curves and unique angles in buildings that so many architects have adopted since Gehry pioneered the process. When you can appreciate the technological innovation at the time and the design process, you can appreciate the building, even if aesthetically, it’s debatable.

Interior of the Experience Music Project Building

As for the inside, any fan of pop music, American music, grunge or the Seattle music scene will be excited.  There are two permanent exhibitions worth noting. One exhibit is a detailed look at the life and career of Jimi Hendrix. The other portrays the history of Nirvana and lead singer Kurt Cobain.  Both Hendrix and Nirvana were children of Seattle. Both put the Pacific Northwest on the map for exciting and incredible innovations in music. The interior is more organized than the exterior but amplified with lights and a fun, pop soundtrack.

The exhibitions are full of fascinating details, from guitars, to concert memorabilia, to doodles on a cocktail napkin. There is a room full of guitars owned by famous musicians from country to metal to everything in between. 

There are a couple other exhibits dedicated to other areas of pop-culture like Sci-fi, but I didn’t visit those.  There are rotating exhibitions, as well. When I visited, there was a fascinating and wonderfully produced show on American Hip-Hop, called “Contact High”.  The souvenir shop has a large selection of records. It is worth a visit on its own if you are an album collector. There is a lovely little café and bar to enjoy post visit.  And since it is right at the foot of the Seattle Space Needle, it is well worth the trip.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy the following:

Passionate about Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton: a ‘Magnifi cent Vessel’

Perched Above the Desert: The Cree House by Albert Frey

The Vienna Secession Building and Gustav Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze”

GSCINPARIS/ ARCHITECTURE

And don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter with updates, articles, architecture and art events and more!

Subscribe to my Newsletter

I have read and agree to the terms & conditions

Leave a Reply Cancel

Books i love.

• Work With Me

Privacy Overview

• Entertainment

Goodbye, EMP: Seattle landmark changes name (again) to Museum of Pop Culture

The Experience Music Project — the museum founded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen 16 years ago — is changing its name for the fifth time. Now it will be the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP.

Share story

The metallic, multihued, architectural undulation at Seattle Center — commonly known as EMP — is being christened for the fifth time.

First it was Experience Music Project. Then it was the acronym EMP, then Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (“EMPSFM” for short-ish), then EMP Museum.

Now the institution founded by former Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen in 2000 and designed by Frank Gehry is becoming the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP.

Pop Culture Party

Museum of pop culture (mopop).

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19; MoPOP (formerly known as Experience Music Project), Seattle Center, Seattle; free ( empmuseum.org ).

The change, said curatorial director Jasen Emmons, has been in the works for about a decade after the museum added its science-fiction component and continued to grapple with its identity. Besides music and science fiction, it has presented exhibitions about fine art (“DoubleTake”), horror film (“Can’t Look Away”), fashion (“World of Wearable Art”), video games (“The Art of Video Games”) and black leather jackets (“Worn to Be Wild”). The new name, Emmons said, “is just catching up with who we are.”

Most Read Entertainment Stories

• Visiting Seattle? Here are the top things to do, according to readers
• Did that $4 thrift shop painting really sell for $191,000? Nope
• 20 years on, a transformed New Zealand looks back at 'Lord of the Rings'
• Author visiting Seattle explains ‘Why Flying Is Miserable'
• 'Iron Flame' is the top national fiction bestseller

“It gets frustrating when people say: ‘What does EMP stand for?’ ” said Emmons, who worked at Microsoft and the licensing company Corbis (founded by Bill Gates) before landing at the museum.

“It was a head-scratcher for the public as we made zigs and zags while we were growing up. People said: ‘Wait, I thought you were supposed to be a rock ‘n’ roll museum.’”

Zigs and zags have been a hallmark of Allen’s restless cultural philanthropy: a computer museum ; an aeronautics museum ; the Upstream music festival ; the Seattle Art Fair ; and Pivot Art + Culture , the perplexing, now-it’s-open, now-it’s-closing, no-wait-it’s-open-again museum on the ground floor of the Allen Institute for Brain Science .

Emmons said Allen views himself as a catalyst who wants to launch projects and step back to see if they can stand on their own — which is why, he added, Allen has slowly reeled back financial support for the multi-mission museum he founded at Seattle Center.

MoPOP-née-Experience Music Project has been running on a deficit for several years, though the museum’s tax records show that deficit shrinking from over $10 million in 2010 to around $3.2 million in 2015.

Jon Eastlake, the museum’s director of finance, said that’s partly due to depreciation of the unusual-looking building made of curves instead of corners (and infamously described by a New York Times architecture critic as “something that crawled out of the sea, rolled over and died”). Unlike some museums, EMP’s building and operations are part of the same legal entity for tax-reporting purposes. “Excluding that depreciation,” Eastlake wrote by email, “EMP produced an excess of revenues over expenses of $3,546,975 and $1,633,207 respectively for 2015 and 2014.”

Planned MoPOP exhibitions for 2017-2018 include artifacts and photographs associated with Jim Henson, David Bowie and cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Emmons said the name change to MoPOP comes at a time of strength, with 743,533 visitors in 2015, up 26 percent from the year before. Emmons attributed those numbers, in part, to the museum stretching its cultural borders.

“Music fans are often hands-in-pocket, too-cool-for-school, and not as interested in interacting with other people,” he said. “Geek culture is really tribal, looking for opportunities to connect with other people who share their passion.”

Still, Emmons hastened to add, MoPOP will always have a place for music.

One of his favorite moments at the museum came three years ago. He was with some tired punk musicians from Boston — bedraggled at the end of a national tour in their van — when they walked into EMP’s Sound Lab. A 12-year-old kid was playing guitar. “They looked at each other and said, ‘He’s pretty good,’ ” Emmons said. The band’s drummer and bass player asked if they could sit in and what the kid knew how to play.

The answer: AC/DC.

Soon, they were playing “Highway to Hell” and people flocked over to watch. After three songs, Emmons said, the kid “floated out of the room like it was the best day of his life.” But the rockers were even more excited. “It was like they were reminded: ‘This is why I do this,’ ” Emmons said. “And we’re going to pass this on to the next generation.”

• Arts & Culture , Family Fun , Sightseeing & Tours

Museum of Pop Culture

There's something for every fan at mopop.

A museum like no other! Visit MoPOP for the best of pop culture history. MoPOP is home to the world’s most immersive pop culture experiences. Whether it’s through your favorite albums, sci-fi and fantasy films, indie video games, or binge-watching that one TV show (again), pop culture is at the heart of our lives and for many of us, our identities. The Museum of Pop Culture takes you behind the scenes of your favorite fandoms through immersive exhibitions and stunning artifacts—from Nirvana to Horror and everything in between.

Visitor Tips

Visit our “Plan Your Visit” for more information on our hours, tickets and other FAQ!

PHONE / BOOKINGS

A big cta about argosy cruises, more about museum of pop culture.

Attractions with Food

Learn all about the best places to eat!

Exploring Seattle’s Cultural Tapestry: Embracing Diversity and Equity through Museum Visits

Introduction Seattle, a city known for its vibrant cultural scene, offers an array of museums that showcase the diverse heritage and history of the region.

Exploring Seattle’s Marvels with Conservation and Sustainability in Mind

Introduction Seattle, the Emerald City, is not only renowned for its stunning natural beauty and vibrant urban culture but also for its commitment to conservation

• TOP 10 SIGHTS
• AROUND THE WORLD

Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, Washington, USA

The Experience Music Project, built in 2000, is located directly under the Seattle Space Needle and houses a museum on the topics of pop and rock music as well as multimedia and cinema. The futuristic abstract building by architect Frank Gehry has caused some criticism among experts.

The Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum opened in 2000 and is located directly below the Seattle Space Needle , from whose observation deck the building's strange abstract shape is best visible.

The architect, Frank Gehry, who among other things also designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain , caused a rather negative echo in the relevant press with his building. If he compares his work to a melted electric guitar, critical voices praise it as anything but.

Criticism of the Experience Music Project Museum

The architecture critic of the New York Times, for example, described it as "something that crawled out of the sea, turned around and died". The public also jokingly calls the complex "The Blob". As always, however, art is very subjective and we recommend you see the unique museum for yourself.

But since, as always, it's the inner values that count, the Experience Music Project is definitely worth a visit. Originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix museum, behind the abstract façade everything revolves around pop and rock as well as the latest multimedia technology .

The themes of the exhibitions change constantly, from various bands to do-it-yourself music and current cinema blockbusters. So it's best to check the website to see what's currently on display. Have fun!

Tip: Admission to the Experience Music Project is included in the Seattle City Pass!

Related links:

Official website of the Experience Music Project in Seattle Link to the Seattle City Pass

Interesting articles for holidays in the USA:

• The Top 10 Sights in the USA
• The Top 10 Sights of New York
• The Top 10 Sights of Los Angeles
• Presidential heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
• Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
• Atlantic City - America's East Coast Pleasure Metropolis
• Willis Tower (Sears Tower)
• Grand Canyon in Arizona
• White House in Washington D.C.
• Hollywood in Los Angeles
• Statue of Liberty in New York

Travel guides and maps USA:

• OVERVIEW: Travel Guide and Maps USA
• Stefan Loose Reiseführer USA, Der Osten: mit Reiseatlas (Stefan Loose Travel Handbücher)
• Lonely Planet Reiseführer USA Osten
• USA, der ganze Westen: Das Handbuch für individuelles Entdecken
• USA-Westen - Reiseführer von Iwanowski: Individualreiseführer mit Extra-Reisekarte und Karten-Download (Reisehandbuch)

The Top 10 Sights of Kenya

The top 10 sights of namibia, the 10 most beautiful national parks of kenya, the 10 most beautiful national parks of tanzania, the top 10 sights of cape verde, the top 10 sights in oman, the 10 most beautiful national parks for safari in africa, the 10 most beautiful national parks of south africa, the 10 most beautiful national parks of uganda.

© Franks Online & Verlags GmbH

• Privacy policy