THE CENTURY PROJECT FOR THE SPACE NEEDLE | Seattle, Washington, USA | 2018

Architects: Olson Kundig
Original Architects: John Graham & Company (1961)
Client: Space Needle Corporation LLC.
General Contractor: Hoffman Construction Company
Engineer of Record: Magnusson Klemencic Associate
Photographers: Nic Lehoux

The Space Needle has always been a treasured place where we can observe the changing city of Seattle juxtaposed against the natural resources that surround it. With the Century Project, the design team ‘widened the lens’ of that human perspective. Providing a new sense of transparency, the redesign brings emphasis back to the Space Needle’s original guiding principal: 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. A key challenge was carrying out the redesign within Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation standards, which prohibit changes to the exterior profile.

This against a backdrop of major public interest–many Seattleites feel ownership over the Space Needle. Thus, the redesign focused on subtraction rather than addition, peeling away the decades of accretions that deviated from the original 1960’s design.

History was a critical and constant baseline for the team’s design decisions. From the outside, the Space Needle appears unchanged, but in fact it has changed significantly.

Removing walls, security cages, and floors and replacing them with 176 tons of glass brings focus back to the views. A fritted pattern on “The Loupe” makes the glass floor opaque from the outside, keeping the exterior profile unchanged.

The design team’s task was to comprehend and make the original Space Needle structure more legible to visitors. The new design allows visitors to observe the constantly changing city of Seattle below them – as it was always intended to do–and to see the engineering brilliance of the original structure in new ways.

Original steel columns have been revealed, along with an enormous 10-foot-tall steel girder circling the mezzanine level. The original steel trusses that hold the gold “halo” have been repurposed to support the glass benches on the observation deck.

“The Loupe” gives visitors never-before-seen views of the elevators, the mechanical apparatus powering the floor’s rotation, and the Space Needle structure itself.

The central goal was to preserve the Space Needle’s legacy for the next 50 years of visitors. The design team made necessary mechanical, building envelope and structural updates, including seismic retrofitting and accessibility improvements.

The project is targeting LEED® Gold for Commercial Interiors certification. The Space Needle’s legs were strengthened, along with the splice plates where the columns connect. Many connection and brace frames were replaced and upgraded for better seismic performance. The entire building is now fully accessible for the first time in history, including the Observation Deck and the newly refurbished restrooms on the service level.