Over the summer I was fortunate enough to have the chance to visit the notorious Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Since it was first opened late in 1997, more than nine million people have visited this iconic building, designed by the Canadian architect Frank Gehry. The breathtaking Guggenheim building reminds me of an attractive stone and titanium boat which sits proudly next to the Bilbao river. It is capable of capturing all the bright lights of the big city, which at different times of the day can emote different moods and perspectives.
It was designed to change the face of the city, and in my opinion it has achieved exactly this. The Guggenheim was conceived as the central piece of a rehabilitation project, set up to give a new purpose to an abandoned industrial estate in the river. It was a risky avant-garde project, which suffered numerous setbacks and defects in the beginning.
What appears today to be the ideal marriage between the museum and the city, was not the case when its planning began, as there were serious problems and also widespread controversy. At the start of the nineties a powerful wave of public outrage arose in the face of its construction. At the bottom of the list was Bilbao, with the figure that the Basque regional government planned to spend on the project. The people of Bilbao had the impression that they were going to pay the Guggenheim Foundation’s debts – and it was rumoured that the foundation was undergoing serious financial difficulties – and that the budget for this huge project was excessive.
As the years rattled on, the leaders of this opposition movement revealed that it was Frank Gehry, (the Guggenheim’s architect) who managed to gradually win the people of the city. Gehry’s project slowly began to convince Bilbao’s inhabitants, that due to its immense beauty and its perfect harmony with its surroundings, this project would be a success.
The building, seen from the river, resembles the shape of a huge steel boat paying homage to the port city that has given it its home. The museum’s bright shining panels resemble fish scales, reflecting the influence of natural forms and shapes that are present in many of Gehry’s works. As I am led to believe, if seen from above, the building takes on the shape of a flower, which again fits in with the organic shapes and natural curves.
Gehry’s huge sculpture-like building is fashioned from a surprising array of materials and endowed with an extraordinary, unmistakable silhouette. Under the apparent chaos caused by the juxtaposition of fragmented volumes with regular forms finished in stone, curved forms covered with titanium and huge glass walls, the building revolves around a central axis, the atrium, a monumentally empty space crowned by a metal dome. Daylight floods in through the glass walls and the skylight set high up in the dome. Leading off from this central space, a system of curved walkways, glass lifts and stairways connect 19 galleries that combine classical, rectangular spaces with others of unusual proportions and forms. The wealth and variety of spaces makes the museum exceptionally versatile.
To design the museum, Gehry’s conscientious team employed computer simulations of the structures that were necessary to support the building, creating shapes that would have been impossible to achieve decades ago. Whilst the museum rises with an influential presence from the surface of the river, its appearance from the street, (which is on a higher level) is much more modest and does not therefore detract from more traditional buildings in its proximity.
Today, hardly anyone remembers those early criticisms, since the success of the building and of the museum itself, is undeniable. Since the Guggenheim was built, Bilbao has never been the same again – the museum has helped create pedestrianised areas that run from the town hall to the port on the shores of the river, and along this route you will also find famous architect Santiago Calatrava’s contribution to the city in the form of one of his highly distinctive bridges.
If you walk along this bridge, the Guggenheim presents you with one of its most visually appealing permanent sculptures - an enormous spider by French sculptor Louise Bourgeois, which is called ‘Maman’. Bourgeois is known for using her personal experience as a woman to influence her work and is an iconic feminist artist, since she has been able to express the combination of strength and fragility of the universal woman’s feelings, like no other artist has been able to.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/bourgeois/
The last of the museum’s major acquisitions, was installed by the North American artist, Jeff Koons. It consists of a giant bunch of coloured flowers resembling the shape of an enormous puppy. This giant pup guards the door to the museum and has become an iconic sculpture of the city and a delight to its people. In light of the Guggenheim’s natural and organic presence, the idea of having an innocent puppy constructed out of colourful flowers only reiterates the Guggenheim’s standpoint, and also gives the area another attraction and focal point.
In truth, the Guggenheim, with or without its pet puppy, is a well-crafted structure and proves that although it is constructed with man-made materials, it can still work within its environment well and also compliment its surroundings.
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