Seattle’s Space Needle now has a dizzying glass floor

Courtesy of Space Needle LLC

Seattle’s most famous landmark has reopened to the public after a massive refurb by Olson Kundig – and it’s got some new tricks up its sleeve…

Visitors to the 184-metre-high Space Needle, which was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair, can now step onto the ‘world’s first and only revolving glass floor’, dubbed The Loupe.

Views from The Loupe. Courtest of Space Needle LLC ad John Lok

Courtesy of Space Needle LLC and John Lok

Courtesy of Space Needle LLC and Rod Mar

Before and after: the view from inside the Upper Atmos. Courtesy of Space Needle LLC and Olson Kundig

The new floor completes one 360-degree orbit per hour, offering views of the tower’s structural mechanics and the Seattle Centre below, as well as downtown and the Puget Sound estuary.

Olson Kundig also stripped back the interiors of the Space Needle’s disc-shaped volume, which contains a restaurant and observation deck above, and removed view-blocking wire cages around the structure, replacing them with tall glass screens.

Says Olson Kundig’s design principal Alan Maskin: ‘The Space Needle has always been a treasured place where we can observe the contrast between the changing city of Seattle juxtaposed against the natural resources that surround it. Our design “widens the lens” of that human perspective.’