EMP Museum

The Experience Music Project ( EMP) is a museum of popular music in Seattle. It was donated by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and is located on the campus of Seattle Center, adjacent to the town's landmark, the Space Needle. The EMP was opened in 2000.

Architecture

The building was designed by architect Frank Gehry and is reminiscent in shape to other buildings of the architect, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Gehry Tower. The mold was described in an article in the Seattle Weekly as " molten electric guitar ". The comparison came from Gehry himself, who described: "We began to collect pictures of Stratocasters, bringing guitar body and use these forms to develop our ideas "

Criticism

The echo in professional circles and the press was rather negative. The architecture critic for the New York Times, Herbert Muschamp described the building as " something that crawled out of the sea, turned around and died ." The Forbes Magazine called it one of the ten ugliest buildings in the world. The building is in the population also jokingly referred to as " The Blob " ( The Blob ) (see also blob architecture ) or "The Hemorrhoid " ( hemorrhoid ) refers.

Use

The building was originally designed as a Jimi Hendrix museum. The museum exhibits especially objects of rock music and used to their new multimedia presentation technology. The building also is " Paul Allen 's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame", and in cooperation with the University of Washington a radio station KEXP.

Trivia

Several pictures of the EMP are included as a desktop background in Windows 7.