MoPOP | The Museum of Popular Culture

MoPOP, formerly the Experience Music Project, is a building unlike any other in the world. The 140,000 square foot museum is a Jimi Hendrix-inspired museum and cultural center whose goal is “celebrating creativity and innovation through American popular music and culture.” Designed by Frank Gehry, MoPOP is located near the base of the Space Needle at the Seattle Center.

Wallace Design Collective worked with the architects and the skin fabricator to design the skin system and its attachment to the building structure. Load testing of the proposed connections was performed to determine accurate capacities. The twisting, rolling exterior of the building comprises over 180,000 square feet of weatherscreen skin, ranging from gold stainless steel to electric-blue painted aluminum. The building is constructed of over 21,000 aluminum and stainless steel shingles and 280 steel ribs. If its 400 tons of structural steel were stretched into the lightest banjo string, it would extend one-fourth of the way to Venus.

The building profile was designed using CATIA, a computer-aided design system originally developed for the design of French fighter jets. CATIA was used to generate contour maps and three-dimensional models of the numerous surfaces of the skin system.

The framing system is made of aluminum and the skin is a combination of aluminum, stainless steel and titanium. The building was designed using a computer model created with the CATIA software system. Consultants and contractors were supplied with a three-dimensional model of the building, and all information was extracted from the model. The roof was analyzed using a topographic map generated from the model to calculate the design snow drifts. The building faces Puget Sound and is located in a Zone 3 seismic region.

photography: ©A. Zahner Company