Experience Music Project building

Experience Music Project Building is a modern and very unusual building located on the edge of Seattle centre, next to the Space Needle and Monorail.

The building is housing the participatory museum of American music. Its visitors can experience the power and joy of music in its many forms. Experience Music Project is dedicated to capturing and reflecting the essence of rock 'n' roll, from its roots in jazz, soul, gospel, country and the blues, to its influence on hip hop, punk and other more recent genres. The collection of the museum includes more than 80,000 artifacts, including musical instruments (even those of famous artists such as Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Kurt Cobain), an extensive recorded sound archive, film, photographs, fanzines from around the world, stage costumes, handwritten song lyrics and rare song sheets.

The project was conceived by Paul G. Allen and Jody Patton. Paul Allen's early passion for Jimi Hendrix led to his amassing of the world's largest collection of singer’s memorabilia, which he wanted to share with the public. The museum was commissioned by software billionaire Paul G. Allen and it was obviously dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. The building got its name after Hendrix’s resonant lyric “Are you experienced?“.

The architect of the building became Frank Gehry. The construction began in 1999 and it was finished just a year later, in 2000, opened a week before 4th July. The architect bent vertical and horizontal lines of building construction into something defiant as well as poetic. He made a kind of a metaphorical match in rock-'n'-roll.

With a fusion of textures and many colors, the museum structure symbolizes the energy and fluidity of music. The exterior consists of stainless steel and painted aluminum shingles, each individually cut and shaped (there are over 3,000 panels covering the exterior skin of Experience Music Project, each panel holding about seven shingles). The stainless steel has three finishes: mirrored purple, lightly brushed silver, and bead-blasted gold. The red and blue sections are painted aluminum. The highest point of the building is nearly 26 metres high, the widest point is 64 metres and the longest one is 110 metres.