The Century Project enhances the Seattle Space Needle

Seattle, Washington, USA

The following description is courtesy of Olson Kundig.

Led by Design Principal Alan Maskin, the Century Project is a renovation of the Space Needle focused on enhancing the visitor experience for the next 50 years. Providing a new sense of transparency, the redesign hearkens back to the Space Needle’s original guiding principle: providing unparalleled views.

On the Observation Level, new seamless floor-to-ceiling glass walls, structural glass barriers, and integral glass benches allow visitors to lean into the city below them. Inside, the new Oculus Stair connects all three top levels with a glass-floored oculus at its base. At the 500-foot level, “The Loupe” is now the world’s first and only revolving glass floor.

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The new design allows visitors to observe the city of Seattle below–as it was always intended to do–and to see the engineering ingenuity of the original structure in new ways. Necessary mechanical, building envelope and structural updates, including seismic retrofitting and accessibility improvements, preserve the Space Needle’s legacy for the next 50 years of visitors. The project is targeting LEED® Gold for Commercial Interiors certification.

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Quote

“In some respects, our design for the Space Needle was more subtractive than additive, peeling away the many decades of additions and modifications that deviated from the purity of the original 1962 design. Our task was to comprehend and make the original structure more legible to visitors. The design allows visitors to witness the constantly changing city of Seattle below them–as it was always intended to do–and also to see the engineering brilliance of the design in new ways.” ― Alan Maskin, Design Principal

Project Credits

Completed: 2018

Size: 50,000SF

Project Team: Alan Maskin, Design Principal; Blair Payson, AIA, LEED® AP, Project Architect; Marlene Chen, AIA, LEED® AP, Crystal Coleman, LEED® AP, Alex Fritz, Julia Khorsand, Hayden Robinson and Nathan Boyd, Architectural Staff; Naomi Mason, IIDA, LEED® AP, Interior Design; Laina Navarro, Interior Design Staff