Travelsmartplanet

Seattle’s Space Needle is omnipresent all over the city.

Architecture doesn’t always spill out onto the roadway. Here’s a place in modernistic Seattle where it includes the road.

Architect Frank Gehry’s signature metallic swoops and swirls allow for great sculptural photographs of the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle.

When architect Frank Gehry designs a building, it’s more than a building, it’s a sculpture. Here in Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture certainly stands out in the city.

The fantastical sheet metal walls of MoPop were designed by Frank Gehry. It is often quoted as looking like a smashed electric guitar. Gehry himself had made the comparison, “We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters, bringing in guitar bodies, drawing on those shapes in developing our ideas.”

Despite some critical reviews of the structure, the building has been called “a fitting backdrop for the world’s largest collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia.” The outside of the building which features a fusion of textures and colors, including gold, silver, deep red, blue and a “shimmering purple haze,” has been declared “an apt representation of the American rock experience.

Groot was created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Tales to Astonish in 1960. The character was supposed to be from outer space and act like a sentient tree-like creature. The first Groot was an invader that wanted to catch humans for experimentation. It’s transformation into a heroic noble being happened in the crossover comic book  storyline “Annihilation: Conquest”. Groot went on to star in Guardians of the Galaxy. He became a pop culture star, with his line “I am Groot” becoming an Internet meme.

What is pop culture without pop music? At MoPop in Seattle, this floor to ceiling column of guitars by Trimpin is called Roots and Branches and is made up of 700 instruments, 40 custom-made. It is computer controlled – self- playing Trimpin’s compositions.

On the back of Jimi Hendrix’s “Love or Confusion” lyrics, this drawing from early 1967 is believed to be by Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. It depicts his Dylan-esque hair, military jacket, Iron Cross necklace, heeled boots and towering Marshall amplifier stack. It also references his manager, band members, and other groups like the Who and the Beatles.

Jimi Hendrix paraphernalia has a big part to play in the MoPop museum collection in Seattle, WA .

Not surprising as it is in Seattle, Wa, at the Museum of Pop Culture there is a section relating to the development of video games. Walk through this doorway and you can play some.