The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was designed to express the dynamic music it commemorates and to serve as an emblem of the city that introduced the term “Rock and Roll”. The building provides a center of entertainment and learning, celebrating urban life and contemporary culture.

This $85-million facility combines geometric forms and cantilevered spaces. The project includes 50,000-sf (4,600-sm) of exhibition space beneath a soaring "glass tent" spanning 260-ft (80-m) that engages an eight-story, 165-ft (50-m) tower containing the Hall of Fame. On the lakeside, the tower meets the water, requiring construction of concrete caps poured over steel piles that extend into the bedrock. The 125-seat theater cantilevers 65 feet out from the tower over the water's edge, 60 feet above the lake. Visitors to the building are not merely spectators but essential participants, animating it with color and movement as they circulate on open balconies, bridges, stairs and escalators crisscrossed up and down. At night the building comes alive with sequenced lights. The design creates for the museum a civic identity that reaches out to the public and anchors Cleveland's developing waterfront as a nationally significant center of entertainment, education and culture.