Is it Seattle style?
Uh, no. So-called signature buildings still are few and far between here.
David Miller is founding partner with the architecture firm Miller Hull Partnership. His company’s work is known for advancing modernism, but within the Northwest sensibility.
About 400 yards from the EMP, his firm produced Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion, a subtle piece of work that blends with the site. In other words, the opposite of Gehry’s look-at-me creation.
Miller, also chairman of the University of Washington’s Department of Architecture, wishes the EMP was a better example of what Gehry does, and believes it could have been a little less aggressive and a little more inviting “gateway” into the Center.
Still, he says, Seattle is better off having it and includes it on his top five list of must-see architectural projects in the city.
“It’s a sculpture, one of the most successful public-arts pieces in Seattle,” he says. “It’s a bit irresponsible and irreverent in the same way the music it represents was. It’s gutsy. Seattle needs a few buildings like that — just not too many.”
Richard Seven is a Seattle Times staff writer. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine photographer.