Celebrating Our Region’s Rich Aerospace Heritage
The Museum of Flight’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery is an exciting landmark in Seattle. Already one of the largest air and space museums in the world, this exhibit sees more than 400,000 visitors each year.
Guided by the Museum’s 20-year master plan, SRG designed the Space Gallery to exhibit NASA’s full fuselage trainer used by shuttle astronauts. The 105x150-foot parallelogram building broadcasts views of its artifact through a 40-foot tall curtain wall that leans toward the roadway. The Gallery’s diagrid steel framing echoes an adjacent Pedestrian Bridge, also designed by SRG, as it bears gravity loads, delivers lateral seismic stability and maximizes transparency.
The diagonal steel tubes of this truss continues the language of the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Pedestrian Bridge as it crosses the street and the building’s dynamic shape echoes the Museum’s Personal Courage Wing. Part of a large-scale development focusing on the west side of the street, the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery adjoins the Museum’s recently completed Aviation Pavilion.
