Architecture 23 of 23 Frank O Gehry The Bilbao Guggenheim Museum

the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was built by Frank Gehry and opened to the public in 1997 the story begins in 1991 Thomas Krenz the director of the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation was looking for a new museum site in Europe at that time the American Foundation had several all over the world the best-known being the one in New York designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Spain the president of the autonomous Basque region invited Tomas Krenz to Bilbao a port that had seen better days its factories and shipyards were closing one after the other it was an unlikely setting for a grand museum according to legend it was while he was jogging across the bridge on his run through the city that Thomas Krenz had a revelation the museum should be just there on that industrial wasteland in the middle of the city on the banks of the river this site is in the center of a geo cultural triangle there is the Bellas Artes Museum the University and the Opera House the three main cultural centers of the city are there the object was to have a building with a strong identity the museum had to let the inhabitants take their city back they had to turn their backs on the industrial period and stop fleeing the city as previous generations had done they needed to get back their civic pride the museum had to be a monument the American architect was already celebrated for his strange deconstructed shapes but for the museum in withou he would create a building to match the scale of his ambition a monumental sculpture with a chaotic abstract look to it in fact the building is more easily read than it first appears to the south the dialogue is with the city stone right angles windows aligned to the north there is empathy with water undulation z' fluid shapes when volumes are separated figurative silhouettes appear there is a cruise liner a metal flower with silvered petals and even a fish with its head and tail chopped off fish and their movements have always been part of my architectural vocabulary I think that it goes back to my childhood every Thursday my grandmother took me to the Jewish market we bought a live carp and took it home where we put it in the bathtub I played with the fish all day until my grandmother killed it to make fish balls the image of the fish appears right away in the very first sketches for the building the extremely complex building at Bilbao started with semi-automatic writing Frank Gehry combined the subconsciously drawn pencil sketches with the requirements of the building program he interpreted his designs into a variety of volumes his preliminary trial pieces freed him to work like a sculptor standing before his clay I made ever bigger and bigger models adding new elements and new pieces to the puzzle once I was on the right track and had a pointer to where it might lead I started to look at the various parts in more detail they developed in their turn then I went back to the rectangular box like bases and looked at it then I started to change its form until I reached a certain stage where I stopped because I felt that that was it a computer program used in aviation design helped to solve the constructional problems a technician pointed to and digitally recorded 56,000 points on the surface of the model the Karla boxes became virtual the program could calculate the practical feasibility of each mass it could demystify the forms a system of metal girders served the rounded skeleton every girder is different each one made to the specifications given by the computer program the American architect made a beautiful object as well as a correctly functioning Museum on one side he placed a shop a cafeteria and an auditorium and on the other side twenty galleries on three floors he set the offices some way off in one of the folds in the building stairs lead the way down to the entrance although rather discreet from the outside from inside the building is immense the museum lies below the level of the city in front of the entrance is an empty space it is natural the atrium is a sort of hybrid area not really outside the building but not entirely inside either it is a public area open to the city in the river a gigantic halfway house between the inside and the outside in the atrium the architecture is the first thing on display the space is tightened bowed twisted the materials confront and contrast Frank Getty speaks of a mix between a futurist city like metropolis and brand koozies workshop cluttered with sculptures on a variety of scales sit on each side of the atrium stairs and lifts are hidden behind large glass scales reminiscent of a moving fish shapes and materials that the architect used at the same time in a building in Prague reappear in Bilbao around the atrium the areas are easier to understand the galleries are situated concentrically each of the spaces is independent glass facades fill the gaps the galleries on the ground-floor are linked by the atrium the galleries on the two upper floors are linked by passageways this concentric layout in Spain is a reminder of frank lloyd wright's building in new york frank gehry makes the reference and then instantly forgets it thanks to the walkways in the outward view visitors can make their journey through the works of art or stroll beside the city each time a visitor leaves the passageway to cross the threshold of a gallery he enters into a different space another world 20 areas follow on but do not resemble each other third floor galleries 305 306 and 307 three galleries three squares whether works are classical the architecture stands back there are straight walls and parquet floors in a mischievous contradiction to the logic of the successive squares frank gehry decided to make a direct access to a totally different space the floor is concrete it is three times as high curved leaf shaped this is gallery number 209 ground floor gallery 104 the room is 130 meters long Frank Gehry's brief included requirements for a space to house monumental works the architect made a gigantic capsized ship's hull ironically at the end of this immense space he put a tiny area for displaying just a few paintings in the center a sculpture by Richard Serra specially created for the Grand Gallery it was installed during the building of the museum three steel leaves undulate and brush against each other in a movement that recalls the building itself so while the museum becomes a sculpture the sculpture here is part of the architecture how should a museum be lit thanks to the height of the ceilings Frank Gehry could obtain a gentle cohabitation of natural and artificial light roof openings are pierced in each of the museum's galleries by making light wells in the upper galleries he could bring daylight into the square-shaped lower galleries but the preference for the museum curators was for artificial light because it is easier to control so Frank Gehry decided to cut off or filter the natural light to soften it Mobil filters were installed that could be removed in winter and reinstalled against the strong summer sunlight in spite of all some of the filters remain in place summer and winter in the end the works were lit by light bulbs just like every other museum in the world once outside it's difficult to find where the various galleries are situated frank gehry confuses the issue demonstration the highest passageway is 26 meters from the ground the highest point of the museum is 53 meters between the two noting 27 meters of empty space that is inaccessible to the visitor that is half the atrium it will be possible to remove the whole of the upper part of the museum without touching a single painting hung on the walls the relationship between the inside and the outside is totally upset by this loss of reference on the outside there are other reference marks to see there is the material for each type of shape the cladding of the classic galleries is in stone square or rectangular the galleries with rounded forms are clad in titanium titanium gives the building its identity a skin comprising 24,000 square meters of metal plates the repetition of sheets folded and slightly bowed emphasizes the movement the museum is covered in scales to capture the light the effect as the Sun sets is guaranteed I spent a lot of time trying to understand the light in Bilbao the steel that I was meant to use in the beginning gave off nothing at all in the light of that region the metal seemed to be dead under a gray sky but quite by chance we found that titanium is very well suited to this sort of light most buildings can't afford this sort of metal because it's very expensive by some miracle the price of titanium suddenly dropped lower than the price of stainless steel that has never happened again since so I've never been able to use it anywhere else in designing his museum the architect made a real urban project he created new crossroads contiguous with the city the railway line between was roofed over by an open space this space is at the end of one of the city streets it becomes a meeting place and redefines the riverbank on Sundays walkers rediscovered the nervion River that had formerly been neglected by the city thanks to a concrete ramp they can rise above the water a pond gives the impression that the river washes the walls of the museum at the end of the building the bridge a gigantic medal rival cuts across it the museum absorbs it passing below and re-emerging behind in the form of a tower stairs lead from the promenade along the riverbank to connect discreetly with the bridge the architect brings the promenade a full circle and back to the city leaving behind a hollow tower a simple two sided theatrical facade when I designed the tower I thought of a sale there is a moment when you're sailing and the boat goes about and you face into the wind just for a fraction of a second the sail Quivers I caught that moment that is what I try to do with my buildings giving them an impression of movement pleases me because that makes them part of the greater movement of the city the buildings are part of life and they change there is something transitory about them the association of an important cultural foundation political goodwill and an unbridled architecture has transmuted base metal into gold this can be called the Bilbao effect the industrial city has become the city of a cultural monument the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao

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Keywords: Architecture, 23, of, 23, Frank, O, Gehry, The, Bilbao, Guggenheim, Museum

Id: 7dm3M6rs6oI

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2011