Seattle Municipal Tower vs U.S. Bank Center

Comparing the Seattle Municipal Tower and the U.S. Bank Center is interesting because they both stand in Seattle, WA, and were completed just one year apart, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The Seattle Municipal Tower is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 722ft (220m) with 57 floors above ground, while the U.S. Bank Center reaches 581ft (177m) with 44 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the Seattle Municipal Tower and the U.S. Bank Center were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Postmodernism style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Bassetti Architects and Callison Architecture followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The Seattle Municipal Tower is primarily governmental, while the U.S. Bank Center is primarily commercial.

Both towers provide significant parking capacity, with Seattle Municipal Tower offering 1600 spaces and the U.S. Bank Center offering 989.

Both towers share the same structural solution, a Frame system.

A frame structure uses a grid of columns and beams to carry the building's loads. This frees the walls from structural duties, allowing for flexible floor plans and larger windows.

However, when it comes to the facade, both buildings use different approaches. The Seattle Municipal Tower uses a Window Wall facade, while the U.S. Bank Center uses a Curtain Wall facade.

A Window Wall facade like the one seen in the Seattle Municipal Tower uses panels fitted between floor slabs, leaving slab edges visible, while a curtain-wall facade like the one seen in the U.S. Bank Center uses a lightweight glass curtain wall hung from the structure.