SEATTLE MOMAI

• Arch 402-

• Fall 2019 Comprehensive Studio

• Professor Rob Whitehead

• Project by Matt Koepke and Braden Cooper

• Kalaher Award Finalists

This proposal for the Seattle MoMAI (Museum of Maritime and Aviation Innovation) has been designed to house various kinds of exhibits of various shapes and sizes. Throughout our design process, we operated under the assumption that the building would need to offer a level of variability so that the exhibits inside could change as their relevance changed over time. We expressed this architecturally by carving voids of various volumes into the buildings massing. We bound these voids together with five “bloob towers”. Each of which has its own programmatic identity. There is a storage tower, an MEP tower, an educational tower, a research tower, and a public entrance/circulation tower. As the educational and research towers progress upward, they turn into light controlled exhibits from the labs and classrooms that they are on the ground floor. The towers are clad in double curved metal panels, paying homage to the innovation and materiality of boat and airplane bodies. The fogged glass facade blurs the inner contents of the museum in an effort to create curiosity in the eyes of people in the park, the sound, and on the road.

Masses Divided

By keeping the function of each mass constant on each floor, way finding is made easier for museum visitors

Perspective

By keeping the function of each mass constant on each floor, way finding is made easier for museum visitors

Section

By keeping the function of each mass constant on each floor, way finding is made easier for museum visitors

Study Model

These process models served as helpful props for reviewers to hold and inevitably flip upside down.

Final Model

Each of the five internal towers took around 20 hours to 3D print. This gave our group ample time to draw while our model was being “prefabricated” independently.