empsfm and Gehry, too

Magnet #809 - Gehry's empsfm

Right? Who knows that that stands for? Like at all. Yep, would have reco'd a combined name for them right off the bat.

But, it looks like they make it work - at least on their site, and in this really good line of webcopy:

EMP|SFM is the place where music meets science fiction. Learn about two popular passions through state-of-the-art exhibitions and hands-on interactives—all under one architecturally amazing roof!

I suppose then, that the building itself is a metastatement (metamash-up?) for the Experimental Music Project Science Fiction Museum.

I visited Seattle a few months before the building was built, and then last December, got to visit...the building. Time didn't permit actually going into either the music or sci-fi exhibit space, though funnily enough, there was enough time for me to mill around the gift shock...and to run around the building itself, taking some of the pics in this album.

Huh.

I tend to like Frank Gehry's work. But this one, I think was just too far out there for me. I loved certain parts of it - all the shiny undulating curves of it - the stuff reminiscent of Bilbao Guggenheim and the Disney complex in LA. It's all that shiny stainless steel and painted aluminum that I love. But, I can't stand the mirrory purple part of the buildings and the red and blue sections, too.

Gehry supposedly meant the different materials to symbolize the fluidity and different kinds of music...so in the end, I guess it's no surprise I didn't dig it, given my own vanilla tastes in Duran Duran music.